As I mentioned in my review of TotalEdit, I’ve been feeding back to the author during the beta stage of this new release. However, even after it came “out of” beta and I reviewed it, I continued with some feedback. All of which the author has taken on board and now, with release 5.0.6 out, now fixed.

Fixes of mine that he’s fixed include…

• Opening files from Windows Explorer now works when remembered files are being opened too.
• The menu has been updated so that the File Explorer control can be updated with no documents are open.
• Shortcuts can now be assigned to external tools.  Use the Customize menu and the Tools tab to assign a control.
• Re-enable the icons of external tools on the menu

None of which is a small change and I’m very grateful for him to make them – now I can assign shortcuts to those customised commands I’ve added to the menu (launch page with Firefox, for example) and clicking on a file that launches TotalEdit will now open the files as well as just the application.

Oh, and that point 2 was that if you didn’t have any open files the option to update the file explorer list wasn’t available – there were ways around this, but it didn’t make sense that all the controls for modifying the look and feel of the application couldn’t be used at this point.

Anyway, all fixed and it makes TotalEdit even better in my eyes.

Well done James – and superb customer service.

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Download from… http://www.codertools.com

Download size… 5.65MB
Installation size… 12.93MB

It isn’t often I try out a new code editor and get excited. But TotalEdit is doing precisely that.

Let’s see what it’s got…

1. Resizable word wrap
2. Line numbering
3. Ability to easily add multiple browser launch
4. Correctly syntax checks PHP embedded within HTML code
5. Work on a USB stick
6. It’s quick to launch
7. Remembers previously opened files

What isn’t there? Well, there isn’t much else, including plugins. My current editor, Notepad++, has those and I don’t use them. It’s also rather bloated compared to others. But, then again, I’m putting it on an external USB drive where space isn’t an issue.

But, there is ONE issue. It isn’t much but that’s all it takes for a product to go from being the best one to being “nearly there”. Whenever I close the program and restart it the explorer toolbar resets back to the root directory structure. It’s remembered the files I was editing, but not the matching folder structure (and as I have my web development files neatly on a USB drive under lots of sub-folders, this is laborious).

Shame, otherwise I may have been switching editors.

I’m going to contact the authors and see if there’s a solution (I can’t find anything in the preferences)… I’ll wait until I get a reply (or not) before I give this software a final score. My hope is that there is a solution.

Update (27/02/2008):

I received a rather speedy reply yesterday from the authors of the software. There is no facility to do what I was after, but they were already looking at modifying the under-used project facilities to do something similar – as in, link the project to a specific folder. The current version was to include this but it didn’t make it in. They’ll hopefully now include it in a later update.

So, I’ll keep an eye out and re-check the program once the update occurs. In the meantime… the software gets 4 (out of 5) stars. So nearly there, but I’m sticking with NotePad++ in the meantime.

Update (09/09/2008):

Version 5 has literally just been released (after some beta testing, which I got involved with) and one thing that’s changed since that earlier review is my preference for editors that I can put on a USB key. Well, thankfully, TotalEdit has a portable version.

Unzipped it comes in at a shade over 11 MB, but this includes 4.5 MB for the spellchecker. In comparison, NotePad++ is a mere 4.5 MB, including a number of plugins that are included, but this doesn’t include a spell checker.

In use, it now has everything I need. It runs swiftly from my USB drive, I can get the display just how I like it, it remembers my previous file usage and, more importantly, the directory structure at the side remembers where I last was too – meaning I can return to exactly where I was everytime. You can even turn off the annoying “long line marker” off easily from the menus (most editors have one, but many have no way of turning them off, other than specifying a column that’s way off the screen).

Like many other editors, it’s been designed for any kind of coding and not just web development (although there is an HTML menu which has tidying options, as well an internal preview feature). Therefore there are no options to launch the current file in an external browser – however, you can create your own tool options. There are two things that now let it down – first of all, it’s not obvious how to do this without turning to the Help (for example, clicking in a blank area to add a new tool, rather than pressing an “add” button, for example). This extends to the shortcuts you can specify as parameters – even the Help isn’t very helpful, and a few examples wouldn’t have gone a miss. Secondly, and only minor, but you don’t get icons for any new tools that you add (picking up the icon from the .exe you specify, I wouldn’t have thought, wouldn’t be too difficult). Having said that, there appear to be a bug where sometimes the existing tools icons don’t appear, so at least it then appears consistent

To launch the current page, say, in Firefox is

Command: firefox
Arguments: "$FilePath"
Output Capture: Dos Prompt / Run Externally

$FilePath is the entire path to the current document, including filename. $FileName, though, is just the filename. I was expecting $FilePath to be just that – the path of folders, hence my confusion. This is where I say some examples would help clear things up a little. Also note the quotes which are required.

Configuration wise, the whole editor is highly changeable (thankfully, in the portable version of the program it’s obvious which files contain configuration data, and therefore shouldn’t be over-written). However, you can’t assign keyboard shortcuts to the tools you create yourself. But otherwise, excellent.

There is a project facility, but this isn’t an option I use (I prefer to use folder structures on my drive as projects) – never-the-less it’s very welcome to have. The same goes for macros – again something I don’t use but it’s welcome to have.

One quick tip… I’ve changed the code font to Consolas, a TrueType monospace font which, if you’ve not got it already, can be downloaded from Microsoft for free.

Summary of TotalEdit

So, what do I think of it overall? Well, I said in my earlier review that it might usurp NotePad++ as my editor of choice if it remembered the folder structures. It now does. So it has.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 25th February 2008.

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Download from… http://www.lopesoft.com

Download size… 3.2MB
Installation size… 4.6MB

LopeEdit is a nice looking editor. It displays line numbers, word wrap indicators and, importantly, wraps correctly (i.e. re-wrapping as the windows resizes, rather than to a fixed screen position).

I tried the free version (as that’s the grand total of how much I wish to pay) but there is a “pay for” version with extra facilities. In this case, however, none of these extras were ones that I was looking for (ftp updates, file comparison, etc., are all available separately and probably a lot more powerful too).

But, as with most editors there are a couple of cons. First of all there’s no facility to launch the current page in a browser (as I’ve said before I’m surprised this isn’t missing from more editors as most are trying to be generic coding editors rather than web-specific). Secondly, this falls into a trap that others do when it comes to syntax highlighting – PHP scripts are assumed to be pure PHP. That means any HTML within them are not displayed correctly (and in the case of LopeEdit, it often gets confused). As most of my pages are HTML with a smattering of PHP within them, this means they highlight badly. Other editors assume both, others have seperate options (i.e. PHP or HTML/PHP).

Summary of LopeEdit Lite

Decent rounded code editor, not web specific, which is where its weaknesses lie.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 4th January 2008.

Download from… http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia

Download size… 1.59MB
Installation size… 1.54MB

Unlike most of the other editors, Arachnophilia is designed specifically for web development. It used to be my editor of choice, but that was version 4.0 (which you can still download from the site). Since then it’s been converted to Java so it will run on most platforms. Unfortunately, as most people will appreciate, that also means it runs like, well, a dog. Particularly to start. It’s slimline in size, but that’s for a reason – there aren’t many options.

It looks as if it’s been designed by someone from Fisher Price and lacks basic facilities such as word wrap and an explorer bar. There is line numbering a good browser launch system, as well as useful features such as the ability to auto-complete an image size.

In an attempt to make an editor for all people he’s made it difficult to use because it doesn’t perform how we expect it to.

I used Arachnophilia in it’s non-Java form because it was quick to use as a simple editor (although it lacked PHP syntax colouring). Now it’s even lost that. It comes with a Windows Installer but.. and this is always a bug-bear of mine… there’s no uninstall option without going into Control Panel.

Summary of Arachnophilia

Slow editor that lacks facilities and looks awful.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 22nd November 2007.

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Download from… http://www.brixoft.net

Download size… 3.73Mb
Installation size… 3.88Mb

This is a quite powerful editor, very similar to a commercial one that I use at work (my day job… not web development). In fact, the site even has a syntax highlighter for the obscure language that I programme in at work (a first that I know of – we had to write our own for the product we use). As with some of the other products I review, this is a generic code editor, which includes compiler options amongst other things. Never-the-less everything I look at specifically have facilities for web coding.

Again, this looks a little old-fashioned, but it’s compact and quick. Line numbering can be turned on, as can word wrap but this is where I came across it’s big problem. Word wrap occurs at a set column position – by default at position 80. All the other products I use wrap to the side of the window, so if you re-size it, the word wrap changes. Indeed, there’s a further problem with the word wrap – where lines wrap onto seperate lines, they are given their own line numbers. So, in the test I used, I had a 24 line piece of code but after turning on word wrap it was 27 lines – this means that debugging code will become harder as line numbers reported by, say, PHP will not correlate unless you turn the word wrap off. I looked in the configuration but couldn’t find a way to change this – I’m sure some people prefer it this way, but I’d at least like a way of changing it.

On top of that there’s little support, or something that will do an equivalent, for launching the code in a browser – just viewing it in the default browser. A crude macro facility exists but I can’t see a way of passing the current file name into it. Maybe there is something but after the word wrapping problem, I pretty much gave up the product.

Summary

Seems quite powerful but unusual for me because of its line wrapping problems, so 3 out of 5 stars.

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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 of ConTEXT

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

Reviewed by David Artiss on 19th November 2007.

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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 of ActiveState Komodo Edit

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 I can’t rate it too highly

Reviewed by David Artiss on 16th November 2007.

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