The editing window is the best around, featuring a left sidebar of all your selectors, a middle pane of the 'code' view, and a right sidebar of a super easy to use click-buttons-to-edit style editor. Combining all of this into a single editor window is a great move.
Whether you’re a self-confessed script kiddie or black hat, a hobby programmer or professional coder, you need to have an app that’s up to the task. If you choose to do your programming on a Mac rather than a PC, below is a list of the best code editing apps that could be mustered.
Test them out, see which one suits you, and dive on into the sublimely mathematical, perfectly logical world of Mac-based coding.
Basic Html Coding
1. Vim
The number one choice for probably the majority of programmers these days, Vim is the most complete code-editing tool around. It uses much less memory than its rivals, it’s open source, and can be used remotely via SSH.
Related: 3 Useful VIM Editor Tips and Tricks for Advanced Users
That’s not all. Vim works on all Unix platforms (so Windows and Linux as well), and is brimming with keyboard shortcuts that make writing long chunks of code a cinch. It may seem like a lot to take in, but all the shortcuts are designed to be memorable (so d for ‘delete,’ obviously), making Vim rather accessible.
With its vast community churning out a constant procession of plug-ins and add-ons, Vim is a vast, flexible tool that can be used for many of the most popular coding environments (C, Python, you name it).
It’s number one for a reason.
2. Atom
Atom is a fantastic code editor for users of all skill levels. Whether you want to tweak source code or play around with packages, you can do so here. It has a great collaboration tool in the form of Teletype, which lets you seamlessly work on code with fellow users.
You can work in the universal hosting service GitHub from directly within Atom too, doing every function from creating new branches to pushing and pulling code requests. Beyond that, Atom is filled with quality-of-life features like autocomplete, a robust search tool and file browser, and a powerful package manager.
On the downside, Atom is fairly memory-intensive, particularly when handling large files, so be sure that your computer is up to the task RAM-wise before jumping in.
3. Sublime Text
One of the best and simplest coding tools ever available to Mac users. Sublime Text is a notepad-like application that lets you write your code, highlight certain parts using its various syntax detecting algorithms and so on. The app has a number of features including Goto Anything, Multiple Selections, Command Palette, etc. If you think the other apps or things are distracting you while doing your coding work, then you can enable the distraction-free writing mode. It disables everything except for the area where you write your code.
![Mac Mac](https://res.allmacwallpaper.com/pic/Thumbnails/2235_728.jpg)
Sublime Text is not free, though you can download the free trial version and it never seem to expires. Nevertheless, if you use and love Sublime Text, it is always good to purchase the license and support the development.
The app is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
4. BBEdit
This is yet another nice tool for coding programs. BBEdit says it does not suck, and that probably means something good for the coders. The app has a nice interface identical to Sublime Text. The app seems to be inclined towards those who do a lot of HTML coding, and maybe that is why there are a number of options to manipulate webpages in the app. It contains FTP and SFTP support, so there is no issue with uploading your files to your server as soon as you are done writing them. Sounds cool, huh?
5. TextMate
Do you have a load of coding work that needs to be done in a short span of time? TextMate is available to help you out. The app makes coding much easier on your Mac than ever with a number of features it comes preloaded with. Syntax highlighting, Multiple Tabs, and Search and Replace are some of the salient features of the app. If you missed closing a bracket, that happens most of the time you are coding; it completes it automatically for you. So the next time you write a program, there is much less of a chance that it will have errors.
6. Brackets
What is it that you use most often while writing code? Yes, you are right. It is brackets. Brackets by Adobe brings a powerful tool for you to code the next big thing. The app is actually built for HTML coders who build hundreds of webpages a day, or maybe even more. It highlights the syntax making it easier for you to find your code blocks and errors and comes with a Live HTML Development that shows the output of your code without having you save or refresh the page. That is really something cool about this app, isn’t it?
7. Textastic
Textastic for Mac is a simple, yet faster, coding tool that delivers what it promises. With features like Auto Completion, it auto-completes some of your code that you would otherwise have to do yourself, saving you some time that you could use to do something else. While most of the other features remain the same as the apps above, it includes a new feature called iCloud syncing. What it does is let you sync your code across your various Mac machines so that you can pick up where you left off easily.
Conclusion
Coding has become a part of many people’s lives these days, and the apps above should help to get it done more quickly and more efficiently.
This article was first published in March 2014 and was updated in June 2019.
Image credit: Closeup coding on screen by oatawa/Shutterstock
You can make a strong argument for hand-coding HTML, but the appeal of a What You See Is What You Get editor for beginners is undeniable. Here's a look at five of the most popular WYSIWYG HTML editing tools.
Photo by ilco.
Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite WYSIWYG HTML editor; now we're back to showcase the five most popular responses. Many of these editors combine the best of both worlds, allowing you to hand edit your code if you wish and work with the WYSIWYG editor when it's more convenient.
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Best WYSIWYG HTML Editor?
In the early days of the internet, building web sites meant rolling up your sleeves and going elbow …
Read more ReadNote: If a specific feature or file-type support is critical to your selection choice, you may want to check out the detailed charts at Wikipedia outlining features of various HTML editors and then double check it against the editor's web site and documentation
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Kompozer (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)
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Kompozer has a lot going for it, foremost of which is the free-as-in-beer price tag. Kompozer sports tabbed editing—WYSIWYG in one tab, raw HTML in the other—on-the-fly editing via the built-in FTP site manager, and a highly customizable interface with easily modified toolbars. Kompozer has a markup cleaner and a W3C call function to validate your HTML against current standards. It's free, available on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, and it has a strong focus on standards compliance and clean code.
iWeb (Mac, $99 for iLife bundle)
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The 'It just works!' design philosophy that permeates Apple offerings is strong with iWeb—the WYSIWYG HTML editor bundled with iLife—and interacting with it is so drag-and-drop and user friendly that even your friends least likely to learn HTML could whip together a functioning web site. Apple provides a number of polished templates and dozens of web site widgets that are all a mouse click away. iWeb's built-in site manager makes it easy to publish to multiple sites or just keep a close eye on your ever-expanding digital manifesto.
Adobe Dreamweaver (Windows/Mac, $300)
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Dreamweaver is a titan in the WYSIWYG world. Now part of the Adobe portfolio but originally launched by Macromedia, Dreamweaver has offered WYSIWYG editing since 1997 when the web was a maze of tiled backgrounds, electric blue links and blinking GIFs. Dreamweaver offers hybrid editing, you can work completely in WYSIWYG mode without ever seeing a bit of code, you can work directly in the code only switching over to preview your work, or you can work in a dual-pane environment to take advantage of WYSIWYG and hand-coding simultaneously. Dreamweaver is extensible with dozens of free and commercial plugs-ins available for everything from web effects and widgets to shopping carts and image galleries.
Microsoft Expression Web (Windows, $125)
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Expression Web is Microsoft's current offering in the WYSIWYG arena (the popular but much maligned FrontPage was retired in 2003). For those of you who associate Microsoft with poor web standards compliance, take comfort knowing that Expression Web has a totally separate engine from Internet Explorer and is compliant with a wide range of current web standards. It shares a lot of features with the other WYSIWYG editors featured here, like highlighting code errors and non-compliant code, a built-in CSS editor, and more, it also stands out for features like search engine optimization—offering you tips and ideas to optimize your sites for better crawling and search engine ranking.
Flux (Mac, $75)
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Flux is a Mac-based WYSIWYG editor that has received high praise for being a powerful editor with a reasonable price tag. Flux's interface offers a fine degree of control over editing everything from the margins and padding to over all size of your elements including altering CSS code with simple mouse movements. Flux offers dual-pane editing so you can switch between hand-editing and drag-and-drop editing instantly or just watch the HTML code unfold as you WYSIWYG edit to study what's going on under the hood. Like Dreamweaver, Flux supports third-party plug-ins which are available for download through the Flux application.
![Best program for html coding machines Best program for html coding machines](/uploads/1/2/6/4/126436479/963677619.jpg)
Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best WYSIWYG editor it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:
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Which WYSIWYG HTML Editor Is Best?online surveys
Have a favorite WYSIWYG editor that didn't get a nod here but you think should have? Want to highlight your favorite feature of an editor that did get a nod? Let's hear about it in the comments. If you have an idea for the next Hive Five make sure to shoot us an email at [email protected] with 'Hive Five' in the subject line so we give your idea the limelight it deserves.
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