These days the popular thing to do is to release software in Beta status, the Beta being more of a status symbol (and to cover your back in case the software doesn’t work) rather than anything.

Unfortunately, it appears to be making companies sloppy. Beta is one thing, but a lot of this software is more alpha quality. In fact, in some cases I’d argue it’s not even that – it’s blatantly not been tested at all before being released.

The latest of these is Apples Safari 3.0.4. Promising lots of improvements, many, many XP users are finding it constantly crashed when being launched. The Apple forums have a “workaround” which many are finding doesn’t work. And I’m one of them.

In fact, I decided to re-install 3.0.3 and found that too crashed. This time, however, the workaround worked and I’m happily working with that version for the time being.

Let’s see how long it takes Apple to fix the issue….

And here’s another. Netgear released a firmware update for a range of its wireless routers on the 3rd November. It worked in so-far as that it stopped most wireless connections from working. So, well tested, eh?

The Netgear forums were a hive of activity, with lots of users having problems. The workaround, as with the Apple issue, was to roll back to a previous release.

Except that today – 16 days later – the same broken firmware is still on their website for download.

Maybe they don’t read their own forums and don’t know about it? Except I reported it a week ago to their technical team and they advised me it “had been passed to the appropriate department”. Hmmm.

And that’s not even masquerading as a beta release!

What’s going on here?

ConTEXT

Download from… http://www.context.cx

Download size… 1.6Mb
Installation size… 2.7Mb

Like many code editors, ConTEXT has been designed to be pretty non-specific. In fact it’s quite lean – it weighs in quiet light in the Mb front but also in the features. All the usuals are there though, including line numbers, syntax highlighting, etc. The GUI is quite basic, looking like a product 10 years older than it really is.

It has a nice explorer bar at the side for file selection and – importantly – has Project facilities but without forcing you to use them. Nice.

The website is detailed, with FAQs and a forum.

Launching in different browsers can be defined by setting up some user-defined keys. These can also be executed by some icons on the toolbar. 4 are available in total and the set-up is quite powerful (compared to most other editors).

Summary

A nice clean, if a little old-fashioned looking editor. This could compete to be my editor of choice. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recently I’ve been looking for a new coding editor to meet my own specific needs. I’ve settled on one, but am always happy to look at potential replacements, if they’ll make my life easier. Anyway, my intention is to add short reviews of these editors as I look at them.

Today I’m looking at Komodo Edit from ActiveState. However, before I start, I should really state what I’m after.

I hand code everything, so I’m not after anything WYSIWYG. However, I would like functionality to preview anything in a number of different browsers (and if I can define them myself, that’s even better). The code should be syntax highlighted with line numbers and, optionally, ident guides. I should be able to word wrap too. Oh, and it has to be free.

And that’s about it. Simple. Sweet.

ActiveState Komodo Edit

Download from… http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_edit/

Download size… 29.7Mb
Installation size… 95.5Mb

So… Komodo Edit. It’s a sub-set of the full commercial Komodo IDE and is a rather good, if basic, editor. All the functionality I want is there but the browser support is limited – strangely to my default (Firefox) and those it’s detected – two different routes to, erm, Firefox. I think it wants me to use Firefox. I can’t find anyway to specify anything different.

It’s also very slow to start-up. You can see from the details above that, once installed, it takes a whopping 95.5Mb. In comparison my current editor, which is far more feature-rich and has numerous plugins installed, takes up 3.5Mb.

Code highlighting is good though and it has the full plethora of my display requirements (line numbers, etc).

Summary

Although it has most of what I want, it’s basic-ness means that the occasional time I am looking for another function, it’s unlikely to be there.

Along with its bulk and its browser limitations, it means that I can only give this 3 out of 5.