.eternal

Tools

The real title of this page should be Development Tools for the Financially Impaired. Or, for the less politically correct: Free Development Tools.

The purpose of this page is to provide a list of tools that I use during my daily development. I am not going to provide links to 50 different ASCII editors, or 20 different compilers, just the one’s that I am using because I think they’re the best there is.

I surf the web a lot, and I try loads of different tools. If you think you know of something better than what I am using, please feel free to post a comment. I will try it out, and if I feel it’s better than what I am using, I will give it a place on my list in place of what I was using. Don’t be offended if I don’t include your tool though: my requirements are pretty specific, and my habits are pretty hard to break.

Text, JavaScript and HTML: Crimson Editor

I have been using this editor for about 5 years, and I am yet to find a replacement. Crimson editor is easy to use, has more features than you can shake a stick at, and just does it’s job well. Features include syntax highlighting, a macro recorder/playback mechanism, tabbed multi-file editing and IE View Source integration, to name but a few. It would seem that development on Crimson Editor stopped sometime in 2004, which gives you an idea of just how good I think this tool is.

I have come across a new tool, Aptana, which is an Eclipse-based JavaScript/generic web IDE. First, let me say that this tool is excellent. I used it for almost a full week before falling back to Crimson Editor. It’s got fantastic code navigation tools, code folding, Intellisense and much other goodness. On the downside, lot’s of the lesser features that I use in Crimson Editor are absent, including the macro recorder, CTRL-Click selects word, and the goto line-number. These may seem like small things, but, as I said, my habits are hard to break. Still, Aptana is in version 0.2.7, so very much beta software. This is one to follow.

JavaScript Debugger: Firebug

This is a recent addition to my web development arsenal. Previously I had been using the Venkman debugger and the Web Developer Toolbar for debugging in Firefox. As I explained to a colleague, Firebug is like the Web Developer Toolbar on speed. I don’t even know where to start with features. We’ll be here for ever, so if you’re doing web development, get Firebug. Get it now.

More to come…