As web developer, text editors are my life. I always write code with a text editor without any framework. PHP, MySQL, HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, Javascript... all wrote without developing software. I started with the famous FrontPage as the wide part of internet workers but now.
Now things are different. On windows i tried a lot of text editors: Dreamweaver, Ultraedit, PsPad, Notepad++, PHPDesigner, HTMLgate...
Now i usually use (on windows) Notepad++, a powerful open source editor with SourceForge support. Its best qualities are:
- syntax highlighting (a lot of languages support);
- installer or standalone application availability;
- plugins availability;
- more languages traduction;
- light and stable;
- more open files in one windows with tabs;
- strings search within files;
- open source and free download from official site.
With this software you're not able to manage remote file through web file management protocols. This a defect but if you use winscp and notepad++ you have all the features you need to work on the web.
Before winscp ftp support i usually used PsPad. This application make you able to edit remote ftp files because it has an integrated ftp client but integrated ftp client make you able to do only few operations and this is the main defect of this software. However PsPad has some qualities:
- indipendent from ftp clients and self-made;
- light and stable.
On Linux things are quite different. Konqueror is my favourite client. Ftp and sftp are supported and KDE integration is wonderful. You have only to intsall "KIO" libraries to get all the KDE support for web protocols. Gnome is not so good with integration between file manager and web protocols.
My Linux favourite text editor is Kwrite. It's easy to use and include all the features a web developer needs:
- perfect (without errors) syntax highlighting (a lot of supported languages);
- remote file management (KDE integration);
- automatic syntax highlighting update within KDE updating process;
- easy and powerful search and replacement strings tools.
In short: the best. Kwrite support is terminated and now KDE includes Kate text editor. Kate includes all the Kwrite features and others useful things:
- more open files in one window management;
- a shell integration;
- strings search within files.
Do you need more?
With Gnome i haven't found yet equivalent software so acctually i feel better with KDE. On Ubuntu (Gnome) i've installed both konqueror and kate and they work fine but there is an hard integration with Nautilus (Gnome file manager) so you have to spend time in simple files operations when KDE helps you. this is why i feel better with KDE.
In short i advice you Notepad++ text editor for windows and Kate text editor for Linux systems. If you can, switch to Linux because, in my opinion, Kate is the best text editor.
