Review: BBEdit 6.5

Reviewed By: Kirk Hiner

Review Date: January 4, 2002

Developer: Bare Bones Software

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS 8.6 (Mac OS 9.1 or later recommended), CarbonLib 1.4

Minimum Requirements - Mac OS X: Mac OS X 10.0 or later (version 10.1 strongly recommended)

Retail Price: $119; $39 upgrade (academic and cross-upgrade deals available)

Availability: Out Now

"It Doesn't Suck" is a registered trademark of Bare Bones Software. Before I even begin this review, I just wanted to point that out. Do with it what you will.

Now, here we are once again in a review of BBEdit. To me, this is kind of like writing a poem about the pen being used to write the poem, or a song about the piano upon which the song is played. All of the reviews I write, the websites I edit, and the articles I compose are done so from within BBEdit's framework. Mac users who write code in any programming language from HTML to Rez (one of my favorite characters from Grease), should be doing so with this program.

For those who don't know about BBEdit, here's a quick quote from my previous review of BBEdit v6.0; "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."

Over a year later, I continue to stand by that quote; I'm still using BBEdit, and I'm still learning from it. Even better, my business is benefiting from it. Just this week, I was faced with the daunting task of updating the copyright notices on all the websites we maintain. We use server side inclide files for most sites, so at least we only have to change one or two files per site, depending upon the complexity of the includes. Unfortunately, that's still plenty of unbillable hours so our clients won't appear out of date. Well, it would have been a lot of unbillable hours were it not for BBEdit. Using BBedit's "Find" feature, I simply searched the entire directory of sites (including nested folders, of course) for "© 2001" and replaced it with "© 2002." I didn't even have to tell it to save the changes, BBEdit does that automatically, then generates a report of the saved changes. I could have it verify saves, and did so at first to make sure everything was running smoothly.

The whole process, including uploading and verifying, was done in a matter of hours. Last year, with fewer clients, it took two people nearly two days. We were able to use all that free taking care of other urgent tasks...such as downloading the new Muckafurgason 30 second songs.

But BBEdit is so much more than this. As I mentioned above, it's loaded with tools that I will certainly never use, just as those of which I most often take advantage are of no concern to C++ programmers. The program covers just about everything, and the more you use it, the more you'll think it was written specifically for you. Well, unless you're not using OS X, but more on that in a bit.

What's new in v6.5? Plenty. You can skim the list here. Undoubtedly, you'll find a few new features that will prompt you to upgrade. For me, one of the most important is support for Cascading Style Sheets. This has quickly become one of my favorite ways to set up websites, and BBEdit--with syntax coloring, rule navigation with a pop-up menu, and contextual mark-up support via the "Tag Maker" interface--is my favorite way to write the code. And hey, it's good to know that as I start to move into other developments such as XHTML, WML and CHTML, BBEdit is already there waiting for me.

I'm also thrilled with the complete support for OS X, far beyond what I would need it to do. For instance, there's the new "bbedit" command-line tool that allows you to invoke BBEdit from anywhere in the Unix command-line to open files. There's pervasive support for "long" file names and file names containing Unicode characters. There's the ability to execute Unix commands and view their output from within BBEdit.

There are plenty of smaller improvements as well: Enhanced window management (including snap-to-grid palette dragging and resizing, multiple clipboards, FTP browser windows, and more. Even better, each new feature is clearly marked in the manual.

That's right, I said "manual." BBEdit still ships with an old-fahioned, full manual, printed on paper and bound for your conveninece, and it's updated along with the updates. It's not a quick start guide, it's not a promo for other how-to guides, it's a by-God manual that actually covers the nuts and bolts of the program. Someone give BBEdit an award for originality.

But here's the bad news. BBEdit is now one application for both OS X and the classic OS. That would normally be a plus, but I found the program to run painfully slow in OS 9.2.2 on some machines. It worked well when tested on an 867MHz G4, but lagged on a 500MHz G4. When I was having trouble with Mac OS 9.2.1 and the ATI Graphic Accelerator extension, it actually took longer for BBEdit to draw characters than it did for me type them. The program's not that slow with Apple's 9.2.2 update, but it still doesn't perform as well as it should. In OS X, however, it performs flawlessly and and looks great.

And so, we're left with the big question; should you upgrade? I hate to take the easy way out, but that depends upon two factors; what OS you're using and what you need BBEdit to do for you. OS X users can certainly justify the upgrade as BBEdit v6.5 is built with you in mind. It has more OS X features than you'll ever dare to use. OS 9 users, however, should proceed with caution. If you really want integrated support for Cascading Style Sheets, an improved grep engine with Perl-compatible regular expression syntax, increased file filtering flexibility, or any of the other major new features, it may be worth it if you have a fast system. Chances are, however, that v6.1 should suffice until v7.0 comes our way.

Now, if you do extensive text and HTML editing and don't have any version of BBEdit...well, we can hardly call you a Mac user then, can we? Buy v6.5, buy v6.0, or just get the free lite version. Either way, just get it, learn it and use it. You'll be a better person for it.

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