BBEdit 8.5
Fantastic update to the app I live in. Despite the only 0.24 jump in the version number, this seems to me to be a bigger update than either 7.0 or 8.0 was. 6.0 probably had more changes under the hood, but they weren’t as evident at the user level.
- Overall, the interface and preferences seem more polished and modern.
- Hierarchical disk browsers that can use BBEdit file filters. I keep two of these open at all times, now that the new layout makes better use of my screen space.
- Indented soft wrapping—at last.
- The Set Jump Mark command, which doesn’t seem to be listed in the official change notes, is very useful. I used to have to type XXX and then search for that to get back to where I was. Now, I don’t need that workaround.
- Camel case (a.k.a. studly) keyboard navigation is built-in, and (unlike my script) works when you have Shift held down to modify the selection.
- The navigation bar has been consolidated and is now keyboard navigable. I also like being able to see the current language and encoding in the status bar.
- Find in Reference works better with different languages.
- Text folding! This is occasionally very useful, but I only use it a few times per day. I’d probably use it more if it were possible to fold text from the keyboard (e.g. everything or the current function) without selecting it first.
- Support for -*- x-counterpart: file; -*- means I can flip back and forth between code and unit tests.
- Codeless language modules can now use regular expressions rather than just matching fixed text strings. This is a huge improvement, although they remain less powerful than TextMate’s language grammars.
- Language-specific editing and display preferences seem nice, though I haven’t had time to play around with them much yet.
- The searchable preferences window is genius. I’ve been using BBEdit for more than ten years, but even I don’t always remember which setting is on which pane. I love that you can see the names of the settings as you search, unlike with System Preferences. The consolidated “Menus” pane is also very nice.
- Document state is now tracked when files are moved—like it was in the old days of resource forks.
- The character-level difference highlighting is useful when comparing lines, but when looking for character rather than line differences I prefer my script that displays all the differences at once.
- Clippings are basically the same as glossary items (you can link to scripts but not embed them), but they’re much easier to create and use than before.
- As I write this, the online store doesn’t seem to be working, but if I understand correctly there’s now a single (non-academic) price—no more secret discount for upgrading from a free product. Good move.
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"Document state is now tracked when files are moved—like it was in the old days of resource forks."
...except when you copy the files to another machine. Then the state is lost, unlike in the good old days. Boo.
@John: "Beginning with version 8.0, BBEdit stores document state (window position and various settings) in a central repository in your BBEdit preferences folder. If you wish, you can ask BBEdit to store document state in the resource fork of the document's file: [...]"
The [...] is left as an exercise for the reader. :-)
"Secret BBEdit Preferences" eh? In that giant change notes web page you couldn't find room for this one? If you'd used extended attributes instead of the resource fork, you could have even marketed it as "advanced technology" ;)
If I remember correctly, I filed a (joke) feature request for a searchable preferences window once (and that was before Apple demoed Spotlight.) I'm so glad it now exists.
Thanks to John for the heads-up about the excellent pricing scheme for this round. I know I've seen it mentioned somewhere, but the refreshed program icon is beautiful. (I disliked the previous one so much I replaced it with a nearly generic one.)
I want also to extend Michael's comment that the "interface and preferences seem more polished and modern." Indicating a few of the file characteristics at the bottom of the window is very nice.
Like the marketing copy says: It doesn't suck.
I' still waiting for a searchfield in the toolbar (!!! the old fashioned quicksearch window is really not handy) and for disk browsers to ALLOW file editing…
