Text Editors

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

This is a rather noobie question.
I've used Textmate in OS 10 and Notepad++ in Windows. What I am looking for in an editor is a hybrid of both. I am looking for an editor that has HTML templates, like Textmate, but also an FTP client integrated, like Notepad++, rolled up into one editor.
Anyone know if there are editors out there like this either for Windows or Mac or both?
I am in the process of trying to learn PHP so having an editor that has an HTML template with and FTP client built in for uploading my scripts to my web server would be perfect
Thanks.

[chrishea]

You might want to look at netbeans http://www.netbeans.org/. This isn't just for Java, it supports a bunch of languages, including PHP and Html/xml, it has lots of features and its free. I haven't taken the time to figure it out yet (I'm still comfortable with my simple tools) but when I have some time, I will. It does seem to have templates and an FTP capability.

Chris

[EdTheUniqueGeek]

NetBeans is not too bad. However, I found something better. It's not exactly a text editor but it is pretty awesome.
I was recommended at another forum to check out Aptana Studio (http://www.aptana.com/). I found it to be pretty powerful and detailed. And, best of all, it's free.

[chrishea]

I downloaded Aptana and did a quick tour. Also seems pretty capable. A fairly detailed comparison of some popular IDEs, including Netbeans and Aptana can be found here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pV8XyUSUOM7ET07rn4n7NYA

As you will see, Aptana and Netbeans both have most of the features but Netbeans comes out ahead on some. Either one can do the job, it becomes a matter of spending the time to learn how to use the tool effectively.

Chris

[chrishea]

Responding to the thread got my interest up so I ended up spending a lot more time looking at IDEs. After doing some more searching and downloading I still found that Aptana Studio and Netbeans were the most full-featured free options. After some experimentation, I settled on Netbeans and I have started to use it.

I think the deciding factor for Netbeans over Aptana Studio was that it just seemed more obvious how to do things with it (although it still takes a little bit of time to learn). I got an immediate payback that it picked up a few cases where I had:
IF (a = b) { instead of IF (a == b) {

This error wasn't picked up as an error in PHP (but obviously it wouldn't work properly).

Netbeans has it's own internal versioning control that seems to work just fine so I didn't need to install any of the 3 other options that it supports (CVS, Mercurial or SubVersion). I was using CSRCS but I decided that I could use Netbeans' internal version instead. It allows you to define funtion keys for its existing functions but it doesn't seem to have a freeform function key option. I was using that option in the Context editor to integrate some external programs such as CSRCS and the PHP Help file. Since netbeans pops up format information, I have less need for the Help file but I would still prefer to have a function key to open it.

All-in-all, 24 hours later, I am now getting used to Netbeans and finding it to be a good step up from an editor like Context. I liked its ability to reformat code and the optional ability to hide sections of commented-out code might be useful in some cases. It has some book-marking capability but I preferred Context's ability to have numbered bookmarks rather than the Netbeans approach to jump from one to the next in sequence. I did some customization of the colors that made it similar to my setup in Context. It was different from Context, perhaps easer and more flexible in some ways, less flexible in others.

Overall, I'm happy with it and if you're looking for a better approach than what you're currently using, you might want to give it a try.

Chris