Comments on: In search of a good CSS Editor with FTP editing on Windows: BBedit Equivalent?

By: alec

alec — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:16:28 +0000

I would recommend Firefox for web development and keeping IE clean for just testing (i.e. as a client), but good to know.

By: Kevin Cannon

Kevin Cannon — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:04:01 +0000

FYI, Internet Explorer has got a developer toolbar.

Also, you can get a mini version of Firebug for it too.

By: alec

alec — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:34:21 +0000

Yes, but if I’ve paid once, I expect you to maintain and improve the product for the next year at least. I don’t expect a software developer to take my money and live in the Caribbean and let his/her application go obsolete.

Absolutely reprehensible. Some of the crooks in SEO software get away with this kind of software pricing model, but in web development applications you’re the first I’ve seen and I hope the last.

Honestly, Paul your pricing model is such a turn-off that I don’t even want to try your product.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who reacts this way.

Personally I won’t buy software which doesn’t come with at least a two year update policy unless it’s in a heavily discounted bundle. At that point, I’ll take my lumps after six months. But three months. Be serious.

You are not an Adopt-an-Ecuadorian-Orphan project which we should be subsidising every month. Sorry.

By: Paul Young

Paul Young — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:01:34 +0000

Microsoft & Adobe don’t put new features in their software every 2 weeks like we do…they generally just fix bugs.

By: alec

alec — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:53:21 +0000

Hello Paul,

Thanks for stopping by. Always nice to see other Canadians doing cool things.

The program looks interesting but I really don’t like your double-dipping price model: stiff initial $50 fee plus $30 for a 1 year update cycle.

Even Microsoft and Adobe don’t pull stunts like that (you’ll get a year at least of updates for free from either of them). Even Apple has 1.5 years between OS X paid upgrades.

Not cool.

By: Paul Young

Paul Young — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:29:44 +0000

Sorry to plug our own product here (couldn’t resist) but you’ll probably want to take a peek at Stylizer:

website: skybound.ca/stylizer

It has all the things mentioned here (live preview in both IE & FF, Firebug-like diagnostics, etc)…and…it’s one of the prettiest Windows apps out there!

By: alec

alec — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:16:25 +0000

Hello Richard,

You’ve got a good point. All of these Windows programs are pretty tough to look at. Linux allows more customisation of the Windowing environment but the Linux crew isn’t really strong on aesthetics within applications.

Once you’ve gone Mac, it’s tough to go back.

In fairness, PSPad is about as minimalist as it gets in Windows. And PSPad doesn’t get in your way either.

Cordial regards, Alec

PS. If you have some better suggestions for llightweight attractive Windows web coding programs, I would be keen to hear them.

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:48:26 +0000

You criticized UltraEdit’s UI design pretty strongly in your post but are currently using PSPad to edit your documents. Looking at the screenshots, I don’t see how PSPad is all that more aesthetically beautiful than UltraEdit?

By: alec

alec — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:06:42 +0000

Hello Julian,

In the end, I chose PSpad as my default Windows editor and am pretty happy with it.

I’d like to move away from Mac OS X to Linux, but like you I have a 12 year investment in software and know-how with Apple.

I’m currently experimenting with Portable Apps. so that I can have my whole workspace on a USB key. But I’d like my USB key to be cross platform, able to run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X at the same time.

We’ll eventually move to Linux but it will take time. Perhaps I won’t be able to switch away from Mac OS X as I’m a legacy user, but my younger employees will be able to make the switch.

One solution we are also working on in terms of the appliations we write ourselves is writing all our own applications as web applications. We are also currently working on creating offline web applications (runs in a browser, but locally).

By: Julian

Julian — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:32:10 +0000

I was interested to read your recommendation of HateML, and tried it with great excitement. But I was frustrated by several irritating limitations, like the FTP client only lets you select one file at a time for uploading, the tag creation dialogs are pretty basic, and I couldn’t find a preview button conveniently on the toolbar. So for now it’s back to PSPad, which if it doesn’t already do what you want, is pretty highly customizable.

I’m seriously considering switching to Linux, where Quanta Plus looks like a really good web development platform. I just need to break my dependency on various Windows tools and utilities I’ve either acquired or written.