by garethjmsaunders » Sat Nov 28, 2009 1:09 am
I'd been using 1st Page 2000 from Evrsoft since about 1999, but around 2005 I was getting more and more frustrated that it wasn't being updated and was falling way behind in terms of web standards. So I went looking for something to replace it. I searched Google for HTML editor.
At the time I couldn't afford Dreamweaver so that was a non-starter (I now own Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 but to be honest even now I use WeBuilder about 99% of the time). I checked out quite a few editors including Eclipse, UltraEdit, Notepad++ but none of them offered what I was looking for. I wanted a stable IDE that gave me code syntax highlighting, customizable colours and keyboard shortcuts, code snippets and project management and all for a good price. As I recall I downloaded a trial of WeBuilder 2005 (6.3) and had purchased the full version within a couple of hours. I've stuck with WeBuilder ever since.
Since then, whenever a new version has been released I've upgraded: WeBuilder 2005, 2006, 2007 and now 2010. Currently two other colleagues at the University of St Andrews use it, as one of a number of code editors they use.
I do keep looking at other editors, just to see what's out there. I currently have WeBuilder 2010, Aptana 2.x and Dreamweaver CS4 installed. I really like Aptana's code-suggestion and completion for jQuery, which is why I use it. Dreamweaver is great for updating navigation in large sites because if you rename a file then it will trawl through the rest of the site automatically and update links to that file wherever it appears. But, as I said, I use WeBuilder as my mainstay HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML and PHP editor. It rocks!