Mother of all text editors
BBEdit is published by Bare Bones Software, but BBEdit is anything but a bare-bones program. To call BBEdit a text editor would be like calling the Space Needle a lightning rod. It is far more than a regular text editor - it can do everything. It can open any document you throw at it, regardless of the creator or type; it can open large files that wimpy programs like SimpleText can't handle; and it is an important programming tool, complete with the most powerful find and replace feature I have ever come across. In the more recent versions, BBEdit has become famous as the ultimate HTML editor (Macinsoft is designed with BBEdit). It is the one tool common to nearly every professional web designer's toolbox.
Professional HTML Editor BBEdit's long list of HTML editing features starts in the file menu which allows you to open files directly from an FTP server, then save them to the FTP server when you're done, without using any outside FTP program. BBEdit will even save your password for you, a feature I have not yet found on a regular FTP program. This is very useful for those of us who do not have to worry about intruders gaining access to our computers.
BBEdit's find and replace feature is also an invaluable tool to web designers. Suppose you started a web site, and gave it a name. After a while, you decide you don't like that name, and you want to change it (such as Macinsoft changing its name from MacWare). Oh no! It'll take hours to go through all of those web pages, changing from one name to another. Not with BBEdit, though. Using BBEdit's powerful find and replace features, you can select a folder on your hard drive and extend your find and replace search to all files in that folder and all nested folders (optional). This feature could also be used for an e-mail address change, a server change (if you use full URLs), a navigation bar change, or just about any other change you can imagine. Because BBEdit can open any file, you could theoretically go through your entire hard drive and change a string of text in every file. However, this wouldn't be very useful, and could inflict a fair bit of damage, so it isn't recommended.
WYWIWYG The real feature that makes BBEdit the best HTML editor around are its HTML Tools. BBEdit isn't a WYSIWYG editor, it's a WYWIWYG editor - What You Want Is What You Get. Other editors produce output that isn't always what you were expecting, but because you edit at a source level in BBEdit, you always know what you're going to get when you open your document with a web browser (assuming you know HTML, of course). BBEdit's tools only make the job of editing HTML easier. For instance, if you want to include a graphic in your web page, you simply have to browse to it in a standard open dialog. BBEdit will automatically fill in the height and width, and allows you to fill in your own values for hspace, vspace, border, etc. When you're done, BBEdit takes all of the information you gave it and creates an IMG tag. Linking to another HTML document is just as easy.
Included with BBEdit is another tool that is useful to both a beginning and experienced web designer. The BBEdit Table Builder is a WYSIWYG table editor. It allows you to create complex table designs (tables within tables within tables...) in a WYSIWYG environment, then import them into BBEdit for raw HTML editing. Using one big table as an entire web page is a popular method for creating complex designs that HTML otherwise would not allow for. Macinsoft's web page is one big two-celled table. The background image serves as a visual divider between the two cells, because the border is set to be invisible. This format is use for many commercial web pages.
The one thing I couldn't find a way to do in BBEdit was to create a web page with frames. Rather than spending paragraphs ranting about the uselessness of frames though, I'll simply say that I don't think this is a major problem, and it is simple enough to create frames by hand.
It's a Grand Slam After looking at the features of BBEdit, it is no wonder it is quite possibly the most popular HTML editor among professional web designers. Everything about it makes it useful for editing HTML, even if that wasn't its original purpose. If you plan to do any HTML editing in the near future, this is a must buy. Although it won't give you the word processor simplicity of a WYSIWYG editor such as Adobe's Pagemill or Claris' Homepage, it won't give you all the restriction headaches that those other programs do.
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 SRP: $119, Upgrade: $39 |