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Favorite Text / Web Development Editor?
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Apple Pro Underwear
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Feb 10, 2010, 01:28 PM
 
Just wanted to get an opinion on what is the best text editor. I have used a few but am starting to program a lot more than I have ever in my life. I just wanted to get a consensus on what is the best or what is the best for which occasion.

I personally use Coda for web development and I think I t works good. I've used BB Edit in the past but it feels more chore like to use it. I use Dreamweaver at work (PC) and it works pretty good (good enough that I won't diss it).

I've looked into TextMate as well because I saw somebody else using it and it looked sweet. I think Ideally, I would like something that is cross-platform, so PC recommendations are welcome as well.
     
nonhuman
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Feb 10, 2010, 01:36 PM
 
If cross-platform consistency is a priority for you there really is nothing better than Emacs, in my opinion. During my several years of freelancing I used Emacs on Linux and was extremely happy. It definitely has a steeper learning curve, and requires more work to get set up, but once you've gotten your Emacs configuration down there is nothing out there than can match it (ok, maybe a good Vim configuration, if that's your thing).

Now, however, my work has provided me with a MacBook Pro and a TextMate license, so I've gone back to using TextMate. In my opinion TextMate is to Emacs as Mac is to Linux: prettier, it's easier to use, and nearly as flexible as Emacs, but it will never quite match it in power. And on the Windows side there's E which is basically a TextMate clone. I do love TextMate, but every so often I get fed up with it's lack of flexibility and power and go back to Emacs for a while. Really the only reason I don't go back to Emacs full time is that I've lost my old .emacs, and TextMate is good enough that I don't feel inclined to invest the time to re-create it (one of these days I probably will though).

It's been a long time since I used BB Edit, but it's a respectable choice as well.

I've heard a lot of good things about Coda, but last I checked it was really only worthwhile if you're doing PHP development. I work almost exclusively in Python, so it doesn't make sense for me. But it's certainly a good looking product!
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 01:46 PM
 
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nonhuman
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Feb 10, 2010, 01:51 PM
 
SubEthaEdit's nice, but unless you're actually using the collaborative features of it, I don't really see what it offers over TextMate, BB Edit, or any other code-highlighting text editor.
     
andi*pandi
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Feb 10, 2010, 01:55 PM
 
I still like bbedit and dreamweaver, but then I haven't given much else a try. Textwrangler I suppose.
     
Doofy
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Feb 10, 2010, 02:01 PM
 
Originally Posted by nonhuman View Post
SubEthaEdit's nice, but unless you're actually using the collaborative features of it, I don't really see what it offers over TextMate, BB Edit, or any other code-highlighting text editor.
BBEdit: $125.
TextMate: €48.75
SubEthaEdit: €29.

The killer for me was the instant web preview. One window to the editor, one window to the preview. Type away in the editor and watch the preview change as you type.

Plus, it's the best looking. No point in having a Mac if you're going to run ugly apps.
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Apple Pro Underwear  (op)
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Feb 10, 2010, 02:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
Coda uses SubEthaEdit as its engine I think. I like Coda.

I think Coda is a little too cute at times. I want something more straight-forward. For instance, it wants me to set up a "site" or whatever. Everything I do is in a CMS these days, so that doesn't apply so much, I just want to open a CSS file.

As for the languages I use: HTML/CSS/JavaScript in reality and some minor PHP

Also, any thoughts on a seperate CSS editor? I almost bought a license for CSS Edit and Espresso last weekend.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 02:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
I think Coda is a little too cute at times. I want something more straight-forward. For instance, it wants me to set up a "site" or whatever. Everything I do is in a CMS these days, so that doesn't apply so much, I just want to open a CSS file.
Yep, SubEthaEdit will do that. It's very simple if you want it to be. Just drag a file to it and edit. Job done.

It's also full of nice touches which you don't notice until you've been using a while. Like it's really really hard to lose work with it, even unsaved files after a KP reboot - they'll still be sitting there as if nothing had happened.

Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
Also, any thoughts on a seperate CSS editor? I almost bought a license for CSS Edit and Espresso last weekend.
I use CSSEdit (macro editing and structure) and SubEthaEdit (fine tuning and formatting). Then run it all through Web Site Maestro before synching local folder with remote using Transmit. Works for me.
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nonhuman
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Feb 10, 2010, 02:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
BBEdit: $125.
TextMate: €48.75
SubEthaEdit: €29.
Good point. Though personally I think the added power and flexibility that TextMate provides justifies the extra €20.

The killer for me was the instant web preview. One window to the editor, one window to the preview. Type away in the editor and watch the preview change as you type.
TextMate has that as well.

Plus, it's the best looking. No point in having a Mac if you're going to run ugly apps.
Been a while since I used SubEthaEdit, but I don't recall it having a significantly different interface from TextMate. Admittedly TextMate's project drawer sucks balls, but using the Project+ plugin fixes that.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 02:51 PM
 
TextWrangler. Previously BBEdit Lite.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 03:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
It's also full of nice touches which you don't notice until you've been using a while. Like it's really really hard to lose work with it, even unsaved files after a KP reboot - they'll still be sitting there as if nothing had happened.
I like the dual screen live preview, but I am good enough with CSS that I know what's going to happen with my code... although I may be convinced when I see it in action...

I use CSSEdit (macro editing and structure) and SubEthaEdit (fine tuning and formatting). Then run it all through Web Site Maestro before synching local folder with remote using Transmit. Works for me.

Is this the Web Site Maestro you speak of? How does it optimize? Is it just scrunching the code?
Apple - Downloads - Internet Utilities - Web Site Maestro

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ALSO - any thoughts on subversion software? I have this one website where they refuse to go on a CMS where I backup and edit every so often.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 04:13 PM
 
Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
Is this the Web Site Maestro you speak of?
Yup.

Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
How does it optimize? Is it just scrunching the code?
About Web Site Optimization by Tonbrand Software
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Feb 10, 2010, 04:46 PM
 
TextMate all the way. Apart from standard Apple apps (Mail, Safari, iTunes), it is the single-most used app on my computer. It has a good integration with git and subversion and the bundles are just awesome. It has boosted my production significantly, although I don't use it for web development. More like trivial modifications of my homepage.
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Feb 10, 2010, 06:29 PM
 
TextWrangler
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:13 PM
 
Coda
     
besson3c
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
BBEdit: $125.
TextMate: €48.75
SubEthaEdit: €29.

The killer for me was the instant web preview. One window to the editor, one window to the preview. Type away in the editor and watch the preview change as you type.

Plus, it's the best looking. No point in having a Mac if you're going to run ugly apps.

Having a preview is pointless if you are advanced enough to stray away from writing static HTML pages and instead have a header and a footer that is generated by a middleware language such as PHP or RoR. This also doesn't buy you much because you shouldn't have to write very much HTML markup at all, most of your fussing will be in CSS, Javascript, and a middleware language, and we have tools such as the Webkit developer tools or Firebug for tweaking CSS and tracing Javascript problems.

I agree with nonhuman, Textmate and emacs are where it's at.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
Coda uses SubEthaEdit as its engine I think. I like Coda.

I think Coda is a little too cute at times. I want something more straight-forward. For instance, it wants me to set up a "site" or whatever. Everything I do is in a CMS these days, so that doesn't apply so much, I just want to open a CSS file.

As for the languages I use: HTML/CSS/JavaScript in reality and some minor PHP

Also, any thoughts on a seperate CSS editor? I almost bought a license for CSS Edit and Espresso last weekend.

Webkit Nightlies for the latest developer tools (which are excellent), or Firebug for Firefox.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:29 PM
 
TextMate

Oh, and CSS Edit rocks.

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besson3c
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:29 PM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post

Deleting white space is also a lousy way to optimize pages. It works, but a far less inconvenient way of doing this is using an Apache module that compresses on the fly. Compression is all about killing white space, so you are basically accomplishing the same thing, just doing it on-the-fly.
     
shifuimam
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:38 PM
 
Dreamweaver, because its intellisense/autocomplete is light years better than any other text editor I've used, and because I write ColdFusion and it supports that best.

*waits for the mocking to commence*
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besson3c
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Feb 10, 2010, 09:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
Dreamweaver, because its intellisense/autocomplete is light years better than any other text editor I've used, and because I write ColdFusion and it supports that best.

*waits for the mocking to commence*
None from me.

If you like using Dreamweaver as a text editor, great. I just don't like the whole "site management" and WYSIWYG crap.
     
Apple Pro Underwear  (op)
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Feb 10, 2010, 10:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
None from me.
If you like using Dreamweaver as a text editor, great. I just don't like the whole "site management" and WYSIWYG crap.
It's not bad actually... feels decently clean as a code editor if you turn everything off and has some solid tools.
     
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Feb 10, 2010, 10:07 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Having a preview is pointless if you are advanced enough to stray away from writing static HTML pages and instead have a header and a footer that is generated by a middleware language such as PHP or RoR. This also doesn't buy you much because you shouldn't have to write very much HTML markup at all, most of your fussing will be in CSS, Javascript, and a middleware language, and we have tools such as the Webkit developer tools or Firebug for tweaking CSS and tracing Javascript problems.
I agree but I always start out with fully coded template and then bring that into the middle ware...

and sometimes I copy/paste source code from the output and use that as a base to write new CSS/HTML
     
besson3c
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Feb 10, 2010, 10:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
It's not bad actually... feels decently clean as a code editor if you turn everything off and has some solid tools.
I'm sure it is cool.

I think Shiffy Mama might have been referencing some knee jerky opinions I used to have about Dreamweaver which were formed back in the day when it was commonly used as a WYWISYG editor and used for site management and stuff. I used to help teach a class using it way back in the day, I hated it and the whole approach of that class was backwards. I'm not a fan of Contribute either.

However, I've since realized that my comments are pretty shallow and knee jerky, so I'm totally open to the idea that it could be a kick ass text editor.
     
besson3c
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Feb 10, 2010, 10:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
I agree but I always start out with fully coded template and then bring that into the middle ware...

and sometimes I copy/paste source code from the output and use that as a base to write new CSS/HTML

Have you found that you can virtually start with a generic template that works for the vast majority of sites? There is so little markup alterations that you need for most sites that I find that the vast majority of time I spend devising a template for a site is in messing around with CSS. Therefore, I just have a generic CodeIgniter based site that I use to start all of my projects on, and as you may know CodeIgniter allows mostly plain HTML views.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 01:19 AM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Having a preview is pointless if you are advanced enough to stray away from writing static HTML pages
I take issue with that. Just because one is advanced enough to "stray away" from static web pages, it doesn't mean that the site requires it.

Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
Deleting white space is also a lousy way to optimize pages. It works, but a far less inconvenient way of doing this is using an Apache module that compresses on the fly. Compression is all about killing white space, so you are basically accomplishing the same thing, just doing it on-the-fly.
So you read the bit where it optimises images and removes comments, right? You know, keep yer source all nice and commented for working on while making yer output all nice and compact?
And you know, not everyone gets the ability to install Apache modules on their web host.
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Feb 11, 2010, 02:45 AM
 
BBEdit and Firebug for me with a backup of Vi and Firebug. I didn't like the Project setup of TextMate, so it didn't work out well for me. I hated how I had to import the site in order to set it up a 'Project'.

Web preview in the editor is worthless for me. I don't deal with static pages. I deal with too much dynamic content and multiple languages on the backend. Beside when I'm debugging and testing with Firebug, I get a preview in an actual browser.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 03:09 AM
 
Originally Posted by Doofy View Post
I take issue with that. Just because one is advanced enough to "stray away" from static web pages, it doesn't mean that the site requires it.
True!

So you read the bit where it optimises images and removes comments, right? You know, keep yer source all nice and commented for working on while making yer output all nice and compact?
And you know, not everyone gets the ability to install Apache modules on their web host.
True again... Sorry for being a little reactionary.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 04:30 AM
 
Another happy TextMate user here. I've been using it for several years now for all kinds of coding and text editing needs. My only real complaint is that it doesn't handle CJK without hacks (and even then, not very well.) I used SubEthaEdit before they started charging for it and it was a pretty good editor, too, but I never really used the collaborative features other than to try them out.

I also use vim/gvim pretty extensively (I do most of my real development work on Linux) and being able to have the same text editor on just about any platform (and even when I'm ssh'd in remotely) is really nice. It certainly takes some getting used to, but it's powerful once you know how to use it.
     
nonhuman
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Feb 11, 2010, 09:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by exca1ibur View Post
BBEdit and Firebug for me with a backup of Vi and Firebug. I didn't like the Project setup of TextMate, so it didn't work out well for me. I hated how I had to import the site in order to set it up a 'Project'.
Not sure what you mean by 'import the site'. If you want to open up a whole site as a project there are two very easy ways:
1. In the Finder, drag the folder containing your site onto the TextMate icon.
2. In the Terminal, use the `mate` command to open the folder in TextMate.

I tend to do most of my work at the command line, and all my sites live in Mercurial repositories in the ~/Projects directory, so when I want to work on one I just open up Terminal and:
Code:
mate ~/Projects/project_name
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 01:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by Apple Pro Underwear View Post
It's not bad actually... feels decently clean as a code editor if you turn everything off and has some solid tools.
If Adobe made a version of Dreamweaver that cut out the WYSIWYG crap and was just the text editor and the file manager (e.g. the built-in support for WebDAV, SFTP, etc), I'd be all over it.
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andi*pandi
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Feb 11, 2010, 01:22 PM
 
I just click on the "code" button and all the wysiwyg goes away. Tada!
     
besson3c
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Feb 11, 2010, 01:28 PM
 
How fast is Dreamweaver these days? Is it slow and heavy feeling like Flash?
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 01:42 PM
 
I upgraded to CS4 from DW 2004 when I recently bought iMac 27...
And I find DW has improved *significantly* - pretty darn snappy.
And the little annoyances are mostly cleaned up: nice tabbed views speedily opens up the (20 or so) pages that I had last had open. FTP smoother & seldom times out, even on balky servers. YMMV
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Feb 11, 2010, 03:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by andi*pandi View Post
I just click on the "code" button and all the wysiwyg goes away. Tada!
Me too, but the bulkiness of the application would be reduced if the WYSIWYG stuff was removed entirely.

DW has been fast for me on Windows since at least CS1...don't know about OS X, though.
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Feb 11, 2010, 03:58 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
Me too, but the bulkiness of the application would be reduced if the WYSIWYG stuff was removed entirely.

DW has been fast for me on Windows since at least CS1...don't know about OS X, though.
That's the question of the day for me. I've seen people arguing for Flash because it is "light and fast". When they said this I immediately assumed that they were on Windows, cause it ain't so on the Mac.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 04:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
That's the question of the day for me. I've seen people arguing for Flash because it is "light and fast". When they said this I immediately assumed that they were on Windows, cause it ain't so on the Mac.
Flash (the authoring app) is freakin' slow as hell on PCs too!

Dreamweaver is snappy, no issues.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 05:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by nonhuman View Post
Not sure what you mean by 'import the site'. If you want to open up a whole site as a project there are two very easy ways:
1. In the Finder, drag the folder containing your site onto the TextMate icon.
2. In the Terminal, use the `mate` command to open the folder in TextMate.

I tend to do most of my work at the command line, and all my sites live in Mercurial repositories in the ~/Projects directory, so when I want to work on one I just open up Terminal and:
Code:
mate ~/Projects/project_name
Thats just it. I don't want to import anything to my system to be able to view multiple pages on the server as a 'Project'. They didn't allow you to do this before, not sure if they do now. If I'm at the command line, often I will just use Vi for any quick edits that I need to do.
     
exca1ibur
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Feb 11, 2010, 05:29 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
If Adobe made a version of Dreamweaver that cut out the WYSIWYG crap and was just the text editor and the file manager (e.g. the built-in support for WebDAV, SFTP, etc), I'd be all over it.
That's basically what Macromedia Homesite was before Adobe killed it to make you use Dreamweaver.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 05:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by exca1ibur View Post
Thats just it. I don't want to import anything to my system to be able to view multiple pages on the server as a 'Project'. They didn't allow you to do this before, not sure if they do now. If I'm at the command line, often I will just use Vi for any quick edits that I need to do.

I never view my pages locally with TextMate, I just use an SSHfs mount to open my project files hosted on the server. Are you referring to a lack of a built in FTP/SFTP/WebDAV client?
     
nonhuman
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Feb 11, 2010, 05:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by exca1ibur View Post
Thats just it. I don't want to import anything to my system to be able to view multiple pages on the server as a 'Project'. They didn't allow you to do this before, not sure if they do now. If I'm at the command line, often I will just use Vi for any quick edits that I need to do.
Ah, I see.

I do pretty much all of my work locally. Ideally I don't touch the server at all after the initial setup (and we've automated that process to the point where very little is necessary at setup too), and use fabric scripts to deploy updates to live sites.
     
exca1ibur
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Feb 11, 2010, 06:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
I never view my pages locally with TextMate, I just use an SSHfs mount to open my project files hosted on the server. Are you referring to a lack of a built in FTP/SFTP/WebDAV client?
That could be it. It's been a long while since I've used to to say for sure. My issue was years ago, so they may very well have changed how things work, I'd have to try it again to see. I'm happy with BBedit so I haven't really bothered looking at anything since then.
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 06:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by nonhuman View Post
Ah, I see.

I do pretty much all of my work locally. Ideally I don't touch the server at all after the initial setup (and we've automated that process to the point where very little is necessary at setup too), and use fabric scripts to deploy updates to live sites.
I'd actually be *very* interested in learning about this process nonhuman, as much detail as you care to provide. I've long thought that a great product would be something that would clone and sandbox websites for users so that they have a functional test environment based on a snapshot of their live site. I have my own way of doing this, but I'm interested in hearing what you do and perhaps stealing some of your ideas
     
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Feb 11, 2010, 06:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
I'd actually be *very* interested in learning about this process nonhuman, as much detail as you care to provide. I've long thought that a great product would be something that would clone and sandbox websites for users so that they have a functional test environment based on a snapshot of their live site. I have my own way of doing this, but I'm interested in hearing what you do and perhaps stealing some of your ideas
What sort of sites do you work on? I'm almost exclusively working in Python, for which virtualenv is a fantastic tool. It allows me to create a completely sandboxed Python environment (using any version of python that I have installed) so that I can use different versions of different dependencies for different apps as necessary.

For non-Python stuff you might want to check out zc.Buildout (which we're starting to look at as well). It's a little more heavy-weight than virtualenv, but, as a result, creates and even more restricted sandbox, that I think would probably work with other environments besides Python.

For deployment we use Fabric, which is a pretty awesome tool to automate running scripts and commands both locally and remotely. It's insanely powerful, to the point that when we want to deploy a new CloudServer (from Rackspace Cloud) we provision the new server through rackspace's control panel, fork our fabric deployment script (it's kept in version control so that we can keep things up to date and such), provide it with the IP address, and root password for the new server, then run a single comman (fab root initial_setup), and it creates our default user, locks down the firewall, sets up SSH to only allow logins with a ssh key, and adds the current users's ssh key to the server's allowed_keys. At that point all that needs to be done is to install and configure whatever server software we need (usually Apache + Nginx + PostgreSQL), which we're planning to automate as well, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

As far as running local instances of the sites, we work mostly with Django, which provides a development server. So to run it locally you just clone the repo for the site, set up a virtualenv for it, install the dependencies (which, thanks to pip is a single command `pip install -r requirements.txt`), drop in our standard local settings file (overrides the projects default settings so that we don't have to completely duplicate the filesystem layout and such; I also prefer to use SQLite for local development rather than MySQL or PostgreSQL). Then a simple `python manage.py runserver` automatically creates a local web server that you can test from. Django also provides an excellent fixture system so that it's easy to include some simple data for testing purposes with the project so that you don't have to worry about manually populating a bare database.
     
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Feb 12, 2010, 07:11 PM
 
I've made my first decision -

I'm retiring Dreamweaver for E Text Editor on the work machine (PC)

E - TextEditor | The power of TextMate on Windows


and if this goes well, I'll do a trial run of Textmate and CSS Editor on the mac at home and if that trumps Coda, then I'll have similar coding environments cross-browser.




_____


Thanks all you mofos for making this thread useful, especially my boy nonhuman - holla y'all
     
Evoken
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Nov 27, 2010, 09:35 PM
 
Espresso + CSSEdit. I love the workflow I have with both apps.

Then it is Coda...of which I can't wait for Panic to release v2.0
     
   
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