Mac OS X Alternatives: The Text Editor
I’m very particular about the text editor I use on all my projects. Quite a few years ago, a friend introduced me to Crimson Editor. If you’ve used this particular editor before, I’m going to assume that you love it just as much as I do. Granted, the only text editors I had tried before that were FrontPage and Dreamweaver, but it felt like it just fit. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in years and there is no version for Mac OS. My biggest problem when switching to a Mac was to find an equivalent alternative that matched its best feature: it’s free.
I did a little research online and found quite a few recommendations for a couple of free editors like TextWrangler and Smultron. I tried both of these out and wasn’t too pleased. Finally, I came across a great program called Komodo Edit from ActiveState. Many things were in-line with what I was accustomed to with Crimson Editor: multi-language support, working on multiple documents simultaneously with tabs, customizable syntax highlighting, and extensive find and replace functionality. I’m also finding great uses for the syntax checking functionality and code folding, which has saved me quite a lot of time looking through large documents for a specific line or two of code. And of course, the best thing about it is that it’s 100% free.
(Note: We are not affiliated with ActiveState and are not being paid for this endorsement.)
Tags: Crimson Editor, Komodo Edit, Mac OS X, text editors