2003–11–22

SubEthaEdit

SubEtha what? Named in honor of Douglas Adams*, this funny sounding software title, SubEthaEdit, is perhaps one of the very best text editors for Mac OS X. As a web developer I’ve used the text editor BBEdit as my primary tool for the past 3 years. It’s a fantastic program with many features. But I don’t use most of them. Why buy features I do not use?

I could use Apple’s free Text Edit which is included with every Mac and I have. But Text Edit lacks two features that I’d like to have for web development. Color coded display of html and browser preview. SubEthaEdit has both. It’s html preview uses Apple’s very own WebKit and so with a Command-R I get a new window that displays my page just as Safari would. This preview page updates live as I make changes to the html. Nice!! The program also integrates well with ftp cilents such as Transmit.

Another unique feature is it’s collaboratory capabilities. Each SubEthaEdit document can be shared via Apple’s Rendezvous technology. I can open a document and in a couple of clicks others on my network (or on the internet) can add content to my document in real time. I see what they type as they type it and they see what I’m typing as well. Very cool.

To top it off, SubEthaEdit is freeware. The developers will accept donations but they do not ask for them!

*The Guide was compiled by researchers roaming round the galaxy, beaming their copy in, which was then instantly available to anybody to read. Over, believe it or not, something called the SubEthaNet. […] I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end. But I did have the inkling of an idea that a collaborative guide, one that was written and kept up to date by the people who used it, in real time, might be a neat idea. – Douglas Adams