Editors for coding

[Beverleyh]

Notepad++ would be my recommendation at this time, although I'm quite curious now to try Komodo that traq has recommended, so my preferences may change once I've had chance to play with that

[james438]

I tip my hat to you Beverlyh for using notepad. That has been my preferred editor since I started coding as well. The only exception to that is that I now I have been using an editor that I built. It still works about the same as notepad though.

I still recommend Notepad or Notepad++ for the same reasons that Beverlyh stated.

[Beverleyh]

Back at ya James! Sometimes simple is best - creativity and ingenuity will always find a way

[djr33]

I personally really like syntax highlighting. Otherwise it's too boring. I don't really mind using notepad, but I certainly wouldn't prefer it to something with highlighting. Then I also really like built-in FTP so I can edit my sites live within the editor rather than having to upload the files separately. (That's less relevant if you do most of your editing on a local test server, though.) Beyond that, I agree that simplicity is the best. Almost every other "feature" just gets in the way. (The one other downside of notepad is that you have to use "go to line" to find where an error is, rather than having the lines numbered on the side, as in other programs. It's not a huge issue, but another reason I think notepad is just slightly too simple.)

Aside from those minor issues of convenience, there's no reason you can't use notepad, though. It has everything you need. Some beginning web designers aren't aware of that and surprised when they find out.

[Beverleyh]

Have you ever heard of/used net2ftp? http://www.net2ftp.com/homepage/download.html

That's quite a nice web-based FTP client for when you're away from your usual machine - totally FREE to download and use. I mainly chose to install it because of its mass upload and unzip feature, which gets around my web host's single file upload frustration, courtesy of their control panel's fussy, one-at-a-time file manager. When I started working at a school, it proved to be a godsend for bypassing the firewalls too. I normally like to FTP with FileZilla at home, but security is so tight in work that I can't FTP to my external web host (only to the in-house and Council servers), so net2ftp makes for a perfect substitute since I can use it to FTP via a browser instead.

Anyway, my main point for bringing it up is that it has a few different editor options as well as FTP functionality - depending on the file type you open within it, net2ftp provides an option to switch between a basic plain text editor, a syntax highlighted editor and then a few WYSIWYG editors (I think TinyMCE and CKEditor)

Its a nice, all-in-one solution that might prove useful to you Dan, or anyone else reading this thread.

BTW - I had problems using the very latest net2ftp release (most likely due to not having the very latest PHP5 installation) so I've continued to use version 0.98.

[djr33]

Seems useful in certain circumstances, but I wouldn't want to use that to replace built-in FTP in my editor (on my own computer). Having easy access from anywhere seems useful, though. Of course it's important to be sure it's completely secure, because that's a potential big security problem.

[Beverleyh]

I hear what you're saying - I wouldn't dream of using their own online installation (their demo) but being as I can install it on my own web hosts server, and access it via a separate FTP account, frequently change FTP passwords as well as the name of the actual installation folder (so the URL often changes too), and lock it down for use via a specific FTP domain (not the same as the domain its installed on and one I can also change often) and only via a limited IP range, I think that its pretty secure.

It's pretty nifty

[traq]

I don't use FTP too often anymore, in favor of SSH or git.