The Best Web Development Software IMHO
16
2007
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Since 1997 I’ve used quite a few different programs to develop websites, and here is the cream of the crop as far as I am concerned:
BBEdit
I used this software on the Mac from 1997-2004 and it was great back then (and I assume it still is). If I used macs on a regular basis (which I don’t), then this would program would have a giant 128×128 icon shortcut right on my desktop. I still tear up a bit thinking about my BBEdit days 
From Bare Bones Software: “BBEdit is the leading professional HTML and text editor for the Macintosh. Specifically crafted in response to the needs of Web authors and software developers, this award-winning product provides an abundance of features for editing, searching, and manipulation of text. BBEdit transforms text with high performance.
An intelligent interface provides easy access to BBEdit’s best of class features including grep pattern matching, search and replace across multiple files, function navigation and syntax coloring for numerous source code languages, code folding, FTP and SFTP open and save…”
Dreamweaver
Once Dreamweaver 2004 came out I gave it a whirl and found out that it didn’t suck anymore. In fact, as it progressed in to MX and version 8, Macromedia added really great html and php support with contextual help, and the php manual right in the program. Dreamweaver grew up from the days when it totally mangled your code, into a really handy all-around web development tool. I wish they had an option to install without unnecessary features though, because this program is quite a beast and starts slow and is slow when switching back and forth between programs.
NotePad++ & WinSCP
This year I figured out how to connect WinSCP with NotePad++, and this is now my editor(s) of choice. WinSCP is just an awesome tool for secure file transfer, it has a lot of unix like functions (grep,chmod,gzip,etc.), and it ultra configurable. You can configure it to open files in extrenal editors, and I have mine set up to open everything in NotePad++. It think it could kick FileZilla’s ass any day. NotePad++ is very BBEdit-like: it has code coloring for lots of languages and a function reference, and it’s freakin’ fast to open. While I wish the function reference worked just like dreamweaver’s, it makes up for that in speed.
What’s your favorite program to develop with? Leave a comment or Subscribe to the RSS feed! 
5 Comments » 1,621 views
Posted in: General
Comment by jfalvarez
on 23 Oct 2007 at 2:43 pm #
At my work, many other developers use NP++ & WinSCP, I use gVim + WinSCP (http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/gvim_on_steroids_(windoze)), I love Vim, but I really want support for auto-completation and some other things like this one, did you try Aptana ? seems cool but I have some issues with the SFTP/FTP connection :S
Comment by LGR
on 23 Oct 2007 at 2:47 pm #
On Windows HTML-Kit, but I am on Linux most of the time now so I am using Bluefish. There is still the odd thing I wish it did differently but for the most part it works well.
Comment by James Ehly
on 23 Oct 2007 at 3:04 pm #
jfalvarez – I have tried Aptana as well as it’s big brother eclipse. I wish I was the kind of code warrior that could command these IDE’s but they’re just too buggy for me. I need something easy, that I don’t have to troubleshoot everyday
Plus they both were kind of sluggish to me. I like programs that show up on screen before my finger is off the mouse button.
Comment by jfalvarez
on 23 Oct 2007 at 3:55 pm #
LGR – On Linux I use KDevelop, nice powerfull IDE, and have a good support for PHP and an SFTP browser
.
James Ehly – Well, I always use Vim for a lot of things but I prefer a powerful IDE for development, here at Windows is pretty hard to find one for PHP development (open source
), I just need 3 things, auto-complete variables and functions, SFTP support, highlights, that’s all 
.
Comment by Richard Le Poidevin
on 09 Jun 2009 at 6:26 am #
I like Netbeans for my PHP