BBEdit 10 ships with 10^2 new features

Written by Matthew JC Powell Wednesday, 20 July 2011 02:55

BBEdit, long the preferred tool for "serious" HTML coders (WYSIWYG? We don't need no stinking WYSIWYG) has turned 10, with a major overhaul to its users interface and performance tweaks to boot. All up Bare Bones is claiming over 100 new features for its flagship product.

The most obvious tweak to the interface is a switch to sidebars instead of drawers for handling documents within a project. This makes related documents easier to find, as well as bringing the app into line with more current OS X interface trends and setting it up for operating in full-screen mode when OS X Lion ships.

Oh yes, it fully supports Lion — but don't worry, it won't require it. Not for a while, anyway.

The other really obvious change is the addition of palettes for quick access to commonly-used markup devices. Previously these required accessing menus or, of course, manually typing in tags. Naturally, typing things in is still a fully-supported option, but if you want a little bit of convenience the palettes mght save some people some time.

It's a step towards WYSIWYG, but don't panic — this isn't InDesign.

A less-obvious but nonetheless jaw-dropping additional feature is an extension of BBEdit's ability to search within zip archives for documents without having to uncompress them. In BBEdit 10 you can not only search within zips, you can edit documents within the archives and save your changes — all without ever cluttering your hard drive with decompressed detritus.

And there is more — way more. Syntax colour schemes (a feature suggested by John Gruber of Daring Fireball) allow flexibility with the way you view your code. Inbuilt Dropbox support marks a move towards the cloud for mobile coders. Auto-saving not only of your documents but of the application's state so that when you restart all your documents are right where you left them. And more to boot.

And all of this with a significant price cut. Formerly $US99.95, BBedit will now retail for $US49.95 via the Mac App Store. Upgrade pricing for users of any commercial version of BBEdit will be $US39.95 if you go directly through Bare Bones. The application will be sold for a short time at the reduced price if you've previously bought directly through Bare Bones and want to switch your licence to an App Store one. That will only last three months though, so get in quick.