Best free coder?

[eclipse]

Hi all,
I was checking out the slightly old (and to my mind untidy) "tools" thread and was wondering if anyone was willing to do a tidy summary of that thread and update it for modern releases? For instance, there's been a lot of development in CMS's lately.

I'm also wondering, with the release of Firebug for Firefox, whether coders have other favourite free code software that they use to speed up their coding? (I know I've been wailing about coding and wanting web design to be like using Indesign, but maybe recently I've "seen the light".) For instance, is FCKeditor a coder that works like Firebug?

just wondering, as I slowly work my way through the code.... wake up and smell the code... love that code.

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

Err, next time please make it easy for users and maybe include a link to the tools thread. Still not sure which one you mean. Regardless, one of the best sources to try and read comments on CMS's is OpenSourceCMS.com.

As to Firebug, that's still very popular as it integrates the most popular web development tools found in advanced coders right into the browser but I find it clunky. It's great for debugging since you can highlight screen content and it will jump right to the related code in the console.

The FCKEditor is really a web based WYSIWYG editor designed to be incorporated into web sites to replace text area form fields without client side plugins. I am not aware of a standalone version for code editing, but I've used in both PHP and ColdFusion MX7 sites in customized CMS's for adding content and it's excellent for that purpose.

In terms of free standalone code editors for Mac OS X you've got Smultron, Jext, Jedit (written in Java) to name a few. In terms of licensed there is a whole world that opens up, i.e. BBEdit but you said free, and the better ones are not free and more powerful IDE's anyway. Of those, RapidWeaver is great on Mac.

BTW, if you get into development, i.e. PHP stuff, make sure whatever you choose has code color highlighting, i.e. PHP functions are in blue, etc.

-jim