What do you use as an editor?

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I've been using windows notepad when I do coding for web sites but I don't like it because you don't get any syntax checking or color highlighting. I'm interested in an editor than can handle HTML, VBScript, JavaScript and PHP. It would be great if this editor had automatic syntax checking.

I know about Visual Interdev but I'm looking for something that's free.

What editor do you use and why do you like it? How about GWD Text editor? This is one that I've tried years ago. Does anybody use it to program?

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I use Edit Pad Lite, it doesn't have syntax highlighting or checking but I hate syntax highlighting and checking.

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Use notepad and when you save it as an html, use Netscape to view it. Netscape's page source (CTRL + U) will highlight any errors (usually flashing) and stuff is colour coded, although whether it's to your preference or not, I couldn't tell ya. Try it! Smile

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BTW, edit pad pro has syntax coloring that you can alter and customize. For many reasons I recommend edit pad.

It's cut down on my coding time a LOT. It's got a tabbed interface and can search and replace through all open docs at once (e.g. open all the files in a folder and then run a Ctr H through all at once).

When I code in remote locations, I download it first. I won't code without it and will only grudgingly use notepad as an alternative.

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I know this is off topic but it just one quick question. What did yall use to learn this stuff with?.. did you buy the books? off the internet? go to school? I'd like to learn some more of it.. ( i dont know that much of web design but still i dont want to go to school for it.... Very Happy

.. -thanks-Jen;)

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I first learned by looking at a page's source code. At that time web page authoring was very simplistic. I have got a couple of books which are more for reference than anything. I've also gained a lot of information from web "how to do it" sites. If I ever see something neat on a web page, I look up the source code to see how they did it. However, I haven't done much in the way of composing a web site in a couple of years now so I'm horribly out of date.

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Someone eMailed a freeware copy of Crimson Editor which I've been checking out tonight. It does syntax checking but I don't like that feature. I guess I don't really need it. I like the way it colorises my code though. I've been using notepad so long I had forgotten about how nice it is to have color in your code.

I will also try edit-pad. Thanks for the suggestion.

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taffykaydee wrote:

I know this is off topic but it just one quick question. What did yall use to learn this stuff with?.. did you buy the books? off the internet? go to school? I'd like to learn some more of it.. ( i dont know that much of web design but still i dont want to go to school for it.... .. -thanks-Jen;)

Well, I learned through years of play. Basically when I had nothing better to do I'd sit down for hours and explore other peoples code. I started out playing with QuickBasic and then I bought a bunch of books and tackled Visual Basic. VB script is just a little different than Visual Basic.

HTML is nothing, anybody can learn it.

I'd suggest going to websites that offer free code samples and then try to hack up the free code. There's enough free code out there on the internet to do pretty much anything you want to do. So really all you need is a basic understanding of the syntax. Then you can just download blocks of code and hack them up the way you want them.

Eventually you will start to understand it well enough to be able to write your own code from scratch.

One of the most useful books I've ever read on the subject was ADO Programming for Visual Basic. It really helps to learn about databases and how to access them through code. Learn how to write SQL statements and how to access MySQL and SQLServer. MySQL is Free but SQL Server was about $1000.00 last time I checked. So MySQL is becoming very popular.

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vi whenever I can.

As far as writing... MS Word, but my editor is Mrs. SealPoet.

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I started building web pages with Notepad in 1994. At that time one of the only browsers around was NCSA Mosaic. Using that, you could find websites with HTML basics, and slowly it started to make sense. When Microsoft came out with FrontPage, that was a big improvement. Then a couple of years ago our company switched over to Adobe GoLive, and it was amazing to see all the errors that FrontPage had put into our web pages. Adobe's terms of use let you install a copy on your home computer, so I didn't have to pay $400 to buy it. GoLive has features comparable to Macromedia Dreamweaver - they're both good for maintaining large corporate websites.

I bought a product called TextPad for around $30. It highlights your code in color and has a hex editor so you can actually look at .EXE files or anything else you want. I had a web page problem once that I couldn't even figure out with GoLive, but TextPad's color highlighting pointed out the problem area right away. At work they bought us UltraEdit-32 which is comparable to TextPad and costs $35. I don't know any free editors.

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I've had great success with HTML-KIT

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I've been using HomeSite (Allaire/Macromedia) ever since I worked at Compaq. Even when I was lucky enough to escape from there, I continued to use it. Prior to that I used an editor called UltraEdit. I've heard it described as Notepad on steroids.

As far as learning, 800 years ago when I began doing this I started out with a WYSIWYG. I would create something and then view the code. I stopped using WYSIWYGs real quick. Where I work, we create pure raw code. There are plenty of books out there relating to all types of client and server-side scripting languages. I recommend reference books. You can learn as you go and they are always handy to have around. There are also some good reference sites online - w3schools.com is a good place to start.

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