BBEdit 10

BBEdit 10.0 adds a bunch of new features that you can also read about in the complete change list. Some of the highlights, for me:

• The long-beloved individual HTML tag editor dialogs are gone, replaced by a generic (but context- and DTD-aware) table-like interface in a popover. My first thought when beta testing this was that someone was modernizing the code for an eventual 64-bit version and didn’t want to re-create the nibs for all those dialogs. Whatever the inspiration, the new interface has really grown on me. At first it seemed too minimalist and simple, but now I think it’s so clean that it’s brilliant. It’s also very keyboard-friendly.
• I’m not exactly sure why, but the new sidebar-based multi-document interface works much better for me than the previous drawer-based interface.
• The case transformation commands are now available as distinct menu items, which means I can give them their own keyboard shortcuts and avoid the clunky Change Case sheet.
• The Preferences window has been vastly simplified, and it’s much easier to configure menu keys.
• Unix filter scripts now operate on stdin and stdout rather than temporary files passed as arguments. This is simply the Right way, and it lets me more easily reuse my scripts in other contexts. Update (2011-08-11): I guess this was just wishful thinking.
• Unix filter scripts now appear in the main Text menu and can be assigned keyboard shortcuts in the normal manner.
• Viewing and editing (and multi-file search/replace!) inside ZIP files. Yes, I like to poke around in EPUB, iWork, and Microsoft Office documents.
• The HTML preview can now wrap the document in a template. I’d been doing this with MarsEdit for a long time, but its preview doesn’t update while editing with BBEdit. Now I can edit and preview in BBEdit, and save directly into MarsEdit. (For most non-blog HTML, I use a pre-processor that doesn’t fit in with BBEdit’s idea of preview templates.)

Some of my main missing features from BBEdit 9 still apply: no TextMate-style “Go to File” within a project, no Git support, underpowered codeless language modules, minimal Xcode integration. So I use Xcode for Objective-C and TextMate for editing reStructuredText (ATPM and my product manuals), but BBEdit for practically everything else.

On the business side, it’s interesting to note that Snow Leopard is now required. They shipped without waiting for Apple to approve it. The Mac App Store version is still missing the authenticated saves feature, but unlike with some developers, you cannot, apparently, purchase from Apple and then decide to use the direct-download version. The price has been drastically reduced. And as the Mac App Store doesn’t offer upgrade pricing, Bare Bones is offering free upgrades to everyone who purchased since the store opened in January and offering everyone else the upgrade price until October. Some longtime users seem upset to be treated to the same pricing as the newbies, but in the Mac App Store world I’m not really sure what the alternative was. And, anyway, it’s definitely worth the $40.

Update: As of August 6, BBEdit 10 is still not available in the Mac App Store. Good thing they didn’t wait to release it.

Update: BBEdit 10 became available in the Mac App Store on August 8.