BBEdit 6.0

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: October 19, 2000

Developer: Bare Bones Software

Minimum Requirements: PowerMac, System 7.5.5 (Mac OS 8.1 for working with multi-byte text), 4MB RAM, CD ROM

Retail Price: $119

Availability: Out Now

I can't remember the first time I used BBEdit Lite. Like Maelstrom, it's just one of those programs that has always been on my computers. I rarely used it, but I kept updating it under the realization that one day, when I was prepare mentally and physically, it would serve me well.

That day came when I was hired by Applelinks to review computer games. Initially sending my reviews as Word files, I quickly acquired the HTML code and began writing my reviews directly into the code so I could take them live myself. BBEdit Lite became the busiest program on my computer. Soon after this, I was hired by Dynamics Online, Inc. as web production manager. Despite my fluency with Adobe GoLive, I was forced to learn Microsoft FrontPage. We thankfully abandoned the horrid FrontPage Explorer portion to free us of those ridiculous FrontPage extensions, but the program still had a tendency to frustrate me. I wanted to do more than it could handle, and I couldn't resort to GoLive because of all the dorky code it throws in, making it impossible for my boss to open my files in FrontPage. BBEdit Lite quickly became the busiest program on my Mac at work as well.

But the odd thing is, it never occurred to me to upgrade to BBEdit. BBEdit Lite did the job, so why bother with a more robust version that probably just has a bunch of features I would never use?

Yeah, and why should Bob Dylan have gone electric.

The first time I opened a file with BBEdit 6.0, I felt so foolish for not using it earlier that I probably blushed. "Colors! My code, she comes in colors!" I sang. This, of course, is nothing new. GoLive, FrontPage, and even many shareware text programs colorize the code to make it easier to tell things apart. But BBEdit Lite didn't do that, so this change was welcome. Curiously, in order for the code to be colorized, you have to append the document with a programming or markup language tag such as .c or .html. I would prefer if I could just directly tell the program how I want the text to be displayed; as code or as normal text.

Then came the pallets. Before BBEdit, I'd quite often at work yell over to the next office, "Bruce, if you don't shut off that friggin' Jewel CD there'll be blood on the carpet!"

Wait a minute. Wrong quote.

Quite often at I'd work I'd yell over to the next office, "Bruce, what's the HTML code for an emdash?" or some other such lost character. And whereas Bruce probably won't, BBEdit tells you. The HTML Entities pallet presents you with a huge list of 8-bit or extended characters. Simply locate the one you want then double click it to add the code to your document. You can even select if you want the code to be inserted by name, decimal value or hexidecimal value. This approach applies to other palettes as well. Want to change the background color of a cell, simply chose a color from the Web Safe Colors palette and drag it into your document. How about adding a table or frames? Again, it's a simple matter of clicking the appropriate button in the HTML Tools palette and formatting it in the pop-up window.

BBEdit 6.0 is full of such features that, aside from being useful, are just plain cool:

• The spell checker that's smart enough to ignore all syntax and just check body and meta tag text
• The preview button that allows you to see your work as plain text or in any web browser (including iCab!), and BBEdit is even smart enough to search your system to see which browsers are installed
• The syntax checker that makes sure you have your HTML ducks in a row

I didn't have to put those examples in an unordered list, but it was just so easy to do I couldn't pass it up.

Bare Bones bills BBEdit as a "...high-performance HTML and text editor for the Macintosh," but that doesn't do it justice. BBEdit is to text editing what PhotoShop is to image creation and manipulation. Like Photoshop, it's easy to complete many complex tasks, but it's also guaranteed that a quick trip through the manual will reveal many simpler ways to do it. Like Photoshop, there's much more power here than most users will ever need, but it's pretty much a safe bet that every function will be used and appreciated by someone. Like Photoshop, you can't help but learn by using this program; I learned much more about HTML and its capabilities by getting down inside the code than I ever could have from GoLive or FrontPage.

And now, finally, I can properly use "grep" in a sentence. Give me a party to attend!

So what's new in version 6? More than I can get into here. Amongst the top new features is the ability to read, write and edit files that contain multi-byte characters (including Unicode text files), Apple Keychain support in the built-in FTP tool, QuickTime support, and more. Many popular functions from previous versions have seen significant improvements, functions such as multi-file search and replace, source code recognition, OSA scripting and AppleScript support.

Many text editors have some of BBEdit's features, but none of them come close to having them all. Many visual HTML editors can replicate and simplify BBEdit's functions, but at the cost of funky code that doesn't always give you what you want. It's almost a relief when at work I pull the HTML out of FrontPage on the PC and bring it over to BBEdit to clean and tweak it. If you work even casually with syntax, BBEdit 6.0 will prove to be an indispensable tool that not only increases productivity over other editors--including its own younger sibling BBEdit Lite--but that simply by function teaches you more about the programming or markup language in which you're writing. Normally I recommend to my readers that they download a demo or lite version to try out a program before purchasing it. Not here. Just buy it. Buy it and get to work; the only thing that can slow you down now is a lack of inspiration.

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