Good editor for ASP/HTML/CSS

toString · 7 May 2006 at 19:02

I use dreamweaver currently, it has colour formatting for all 3, and even has a nice dropdown when typing Response. (etc, etc). My only trouble is, I can't edit XML/XSL files in it, because it seems to write some kind of whitespace character somewhere, which means it refuses to parse.

Is there anything that does all what I have, plus the extra?

Many thanks for any info!
KA

toString · 8 May 2006 at 20:25

No one?!

Augmented · 8 May 2006 at 22:58

Sounds like a BOM issue. Check the preferences for something like 'add BOM to UTF-8' or anything regarding the byte-order mark. Make sure it's not adding a BOM to your files.

XML is by default saved as unicode, and you [the program] can add a BOM to identify it as so. But it's not necessary and, as you've discovered, causes problems.

HTH

.

celliott · 9 May 2006 at 07:59

Notepad

Chewy · 9 May 2006 at 08:32

Try notepad++

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/about.php

I'd have it's babies if I could.

Augmented · 9 May 2006 at 09:02

celliott said:
Notepad

Notepad adds a BOM automatically to any file saved as UTF-8, without the option to stop it - one of the many reasons not to use Notepad

.

Ozias · 9 May 2006 at 09:50

TextPad is quite good - http://www.textpad.com/

It seems to handle xml and xsl files without rendering them unusable.

* regular expression search / replace
* file / directory search
* context highlighting for a variety of different programming languages and scripts
* allows you to configure your own context highlighting settings and save them as a new 'module'

TextPad is distributes as shareware, with a single user license costing $30.

Scarylion · 9 May 2006 at 13:29

Scite is nicey

joilet · 9 May 2006 at 16:31

Scarylion said:
Scite is nicey

Scite/Scintilla is pretty good and has colour coding for many types of code setup by default. Although i think you may need to add a line to the config file for it to use vbscript colouring with ASP files.

I use dreamweaver to edit XML/XSL files all the time and don't get any issues? One thing i do find is IE has some stupid caching problem with XML and XSL sheets. often when mistakes are made and an error appears; if you correct it, IE fails to recognise it! I always test XSL transformations in firefox now.

Dj_Jestar · 9 May 2006 at 16:40

Text Editor

Cybertronic · 9 May 2006 at 20:10

Chewy said:
Try notepad++

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/about.php

Seconded

toString · 9 May 2006 at 20:34

Cheers for the info, I'll check these out. Never heard of this BOM issue. But that would explain the problems I've been having...
Trouble is, my way around it IS to use notepad. I assumed it was the cleanest way of editing a file. Maybe I was wrong(!)

joilet said:
Scite/Scintilla is pretty good and has colour coding for many types of code setup by default. Although i think you may need to add a line to the config file for it to use vbscript colouring with ASP files.

I use dreamweaver to edit XML/XSL files all the time and don't get any issues? One thing i do find is IE has some stupid caching problem with XML and XSL sheets. often when mistakes are made and an error appears; if you correct it, IE fails to recognise it! I always test XSL transformations in firefox now.

Can I ask which DW version your using? Maybe mine is old, or I haven't set it up right..

iCraig · 9 May 2006 at 23:11

PsPad for me.

At the end of the day, they are all good. Its down to preference really.

akakjs · 11 May 2006 at 07:53

Ultraedit not free and doesn't have the inteli-type style completion, but excellent open/save over FTP support.

akakjs

MrWhippy · 11 May 2006 at 15:09

big fan of Context myself.

oh, yeah, and it's free!

Augmented · 11 May 2006 at 15:33

KingAdora said:
Cheers for the info, I'll check these out. Never heard of this BOM issue. But that would explain the problems I've been having...
Trouble is, my way around it IS to use notepad. I assumed it was the cleanest way of editing a file. Maybe I was wrong(!)

Well you're likely not saving your files in Notepad as UTF-8, but the default of ANSI, so you're not experiencing this issue because it doesn't add the BOM.
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_encoding.asp.

I don't believe you need a new editor at all, you just need to configure DW's 'New Document' options correctly:

# If you select Unicode (UTF-8) as a default encoding, you can include a Byte Order Mark (BOM) in the document by selecting the Include Unicode Signature (BOM) option.

A BOM is 2 to 4 bytes at the beginning of a text file that identifies a file as Unicode, as well as the byte order of the following bytes. Because UTF-8 has no byte order, adding a UTF-8 BOM is optional. For UTF-16 and UTF-32, it is required.

http://livedocs.macromedia.com/drea....htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=04_doc15.htm

Moredhel · 11 May 2006 at 16:09

I'm a huge fan of vim, FTP / CVS / Subversion support, excellent customisable syntax hilighting (including hilighting of matching closing brackets / braces etc., very clever auto indentation, function auto completion, nice macro support, all functions are only a button press away, decent regexp based search / substitution (missing from oh so many editors). Works on pretty much any platform with minimal dependancies.

Only disadvantage is that the learning curve is more of a learning right angle. But once you learn how to use it you really do end up doing things faster than in any other editor.