Neil Merton

Windows TextMate Port

I’ve never really used the TextMate editor, but have always heard good things about it from the Mac community. It’s an ingenious approach to code writing as it tried to aid writing code quickly by offering snippets in a variety of coding languages (including ColdFusion).

It was purely by chance that I happened to stumble upon a new text editor that has just become available for the PC called e-TextEditor and it seems to emulate TextMate very closely, which is nice.

So, naturally I was quick to download and install it. After applying the ColdFusion Bundle (which was a breeze thanks to cfTextMate) I tested out the editor’s nifty features. Very impressive, and I’m sure with regular use writing ColdFusion will be an even more pleasurable experience.

Here’s a few items I really like:

1. Indent guides - provides a visual guide to your code indents
2. Themes - loads of different colour themes to choose from (not essential, but a nice bonus!)
3. Bundles - these are code ‘packages’ that allows the magic to happen (e.g. simply type ‘cfif’, press tab and be amazed!)
4. TODO / FIXME / CHANGED - simply add these to comments and then view the list of things to do

The editor is still in beta stage, so it’s a little rough around the edges, but I know I’ll be keeping a very close eye on it’s progress.

Gem of an Editor

I recently had the need of a code editor that could make backups of files before saving them - a feature that I though I wouldn’t be able to find in a free application.

After a short Google session I came upon Crimson Editor. It’s no longer being maintained but it is definately worth investigating if you’re looking for a light-weight code editor. The one feature that I do love is the ability to create a copy of the file before it was editted when you save it. This can also be done in such a way that they get autonumbered - thus creating a simply version control system.

There is a set of ColdFusion tags in a syntax file (click on ‘Syntax Files’ and then search for the term ‘ColdFusion’) and these are very easy to install. It doesn’t have an auto-complete feature, but this can be a good thing as it forces you to remember the tags.