Aptana Studio

I've been guilty of using the resource-hogging program Dreamweaver for code development for the last few years. I've been trying to find an alternative for a long time that would suit my needs in terms of features, stability and ease of use. Unfortunately for a long time my quest for an alternative has been rather unsuccessful.



Note: I should clarify something before I continue. I don't use the WYSIWYG editor in Dreamweaver. That's always the first thing people say when I tell them I used Dreamweaver. But fortunately, I use just the Code view.

There has been a lot of candidates, but none of them "feel" right. For a program to feel right, it must meet all of my specific requirements or it just wasn't going to work. Here's a list of some of the things I was looking for:

-Free (as in beer)
-Free (as in speech, open source, community development)
-Cross-platform (Windows, Mac, & Linux)
-PHP syntax highlighting (must be customizable)
-Plug-in system for unlimited/custom feature additions
-Nice user-interface, not clunky or obviously "designed" by a programmer ;)
-Built-in FTP support (Secured FTP at least possible through plug-in)
-Not a system resource hog, nor has any serious issues with memory management
-Code-collapsing system that's actually stable and won't ruin your files
-Basic features such as tabs, line numbers, and customizable UI views

A long list, yeah, I know. But if I'm going to work effectively, I need the right tools to do the job. My code editor is where 90% of my work takes place. It has to be damn good. To my shock and surprise, I finally found an editor that meets all of these requirements one late night doing some surfing.

What's it called? It goes by the name of Aptana.



I was actually looking for an editor to do some iPhone development in and also one to do AIR development in. Aptana has an amazing iPhone plug-in and, to my delight, it also has an AIR plug-in that is similarly awesome.



I feel like I've hit the jackpot with this thing. I can't believe I've not heard about it before. I can't believe it's free. There is a Pro edition that you have to pay for which gives you various extra features, but the "Community Edition" as they call it is absolutely free. And it's a much better product than the $399 US Adobe Dreamweaver 8, in my humble opinion.



So, if you're a geeky web developer like myself, and you're currently not satisfied with your code editor, I'd highly recommend taking a look at it if you've not done so yet.

Sam
(One of the 1.2 million people who've downloaded Aptana)