Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Aptana IDE: Is it the text editor you’ve been looking for?

UPDATE 2: Aptana, beta build 9 includes support for PHP.

UPDATE: Aptana has released a beta version that has Ruby on Rails support

I first heard of Aptana in the comment thread of a Lifehacker post (about free CSS editors). I’ve been using it on and off for the last few months, both at home and the office. It’s (almost) a dream piece of software for front-end web development. The down side: it’s software for front-end development.

aptana
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Because it is a modified version of the Eclipse IDE, Aptana is also open source. It’s licensed under the Eclipse Public License, and freely available from the Aptana web site.

Aptana is written in Java, making it cross-platform. Windows, Mac and Linux versions are available. Aptana is also available as a plug-in for Eclipse. You’ll need to JRE 1.4.2 or higher installed.

Aptana bills itself as a tool for JavaScript and Ajax development. But it’s also a fantastically capable CSS and HTML Editor.

It’s specialization, however, is also its biggest drawback. If you also write a great deal of PHP, Ruby, .NET, XML, or SQL code, skip Aptana. There are several text editors far better suited to multi-lingual coding. In principle, you could use Aptana to develop in other languages. But it doesn’t (yet) offer syntax highlighting for them.

For front-end web developers, however, Aptana is drool-worthy — it’s downright sexy when you consider its (non-existent) price tag.

Pros of Aptana

  • Tag auto close.
  • Auto formatting.
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Built-in tree inspector
  • Automatic quote and curly bracket balancing.
  • JavaScript, CSS and HTML quick complete, including -moz-* properties for Mozilla-based browsers.
  • CSS and HTML code hints: displays valid attributes and property values for the tag in question.
  • Automatically stores your JavaScript variables, and offers a complete feature for them.
  • Parses and debugs code on the fly.
  • Live preview lets you view your pages without having to fire up a browser.
  • Integrated FTP / SFTP
  • Unlike jEdit, can store an FTP / SFTP password.
  • Supports code folding

Cons

  • Tree inspector does not display text nodes.
  • Requires a right-click (or equivalent) to set up SFTP. Kind of a pain for Mac users.
  • Limited to front-end web development. No syntax highlighting for PHP, Ruby, Java, etc. Aptana has added support for Ruby and PHP.
  • Freeze-prone on Macs (PowerPC-based and to a lesser extent Intel-based)
  • Doesn’t recognize innerHTML (which is not technically standard JavaScript, but is widely-supported). I originally stated that Aptana doesn’t recognize innerHTML. It does. My bad and apologies to the Aptana team.

  • No support for server-side languages.

  • Interface is a little bit busy. Lots of panels and panes. Not an interface native to Windows or Mac.

Used Aptana? Like it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments.

Related: What’s your favorite text editor or IDE?

  • Thanks for the advice!

    I saw a tutorial on html coding on Youtube where the young fellow was using Dreamweaver, and it made me realize something:

    I LOVE CODE HINTS!!!

    I'm just starting out with coding and I am eager to get my site looking pleasant to the eye because I feel I have a lot of important things to say.

    I think this will be exactly what the doctor ordered.

    Thanks for the review!

    David.
  • I'm evaluating this at the moment for my company Heavenly Media. Some features I'm finding totally invaluable are:

    1. The great subversion support through subclipse, it just works really well, as good as tortoise.

    2. The Database browser, it apparently found all my databases by inspecting my yml. I can open a database view in a tab and make changes on the fly. Ctrl s writes the changes just as though the database was a file.

    3. Error highlighting. Syntax errors are underlined and theres a view which shows all the errors in the project in a single list. Double click to go fix.

    4. The genuinely useful code completion. Code completion can often be irritating. This gets it right and gives the most common completions first.

    Features I'm liking less are: The editor still feels a little clunky, I'm used to jedit which is sublime as an editor and I'm missing some of the features, eg the easy multi pane splitting and the block level editing. You can split panes but it's a little awkward to do. That said I'm still finding new features so probably this will soon be second nature.
  • Thanks for the update, Tiffany! If you're able to reproduce the innerHTML bug, let us know, and we'll try to figure out what's going on.

    --Michelle
    Aptana
  • Gotta respect the love your getting from the good folks at Aptana.
  • "Interface is a little bit busy. Lots of panels and panes. Not an interface native to Windows or Mac."

    This is one of my peeves against Eclipse in general.
  • I use TextWrangler too, but I miss some of the fuller features of BBEdit. That's a big reason why I use jEdit and Aptana. jEdit allows me to save code samples and templates. Aptana has Code Assist and tag/bracket/quote balancing. If Aptana had support for server-side languages, I'd probably use it exclusively. Anything that saves me typing is gold. Anything that is also free is platinum.

    HTML-Kit is the best free editor I've ever used; if my antivirus software hadn't detected a buffer overflow, I would have stuck with that (at least on my Windows box).

    I lean towards cross-platform applications, though, because there are fewer keystrokes and menu commands to remember. It's why I still favor Firefox on my Mac at home and at work, despite the fact that Camino and Safari perform much better on that platform. (Plus Firefox + Firebug + the Web Developer Extension + ColorZilla + MeasureIt = amazing development environment.)
  • If Macromates made a lite version of TextMate that just offered HTML/CSS/PHP syntaxing, I'd get that instead!! If you like BBEdit, you might wanna check out their free version TextWrangler.
  • @Michelle, innerHTML doesn't always pop up in Code Assist. I just tried it and I see that it's there now. I'm not sure whether it was my eyes or my code that kept it from appearing before :-).

    I'll try to reproduce it and leave a comment on the Trac ticket one way or the other.

    @Frank: I tried TextMate, but didn't like it. I forgot exactly why but I didn't want to go back. It may have been the price :-). If I did more freelance work, I'd probably just shell out the cash for BBEdit instead.
  • Tiffany, can you post an example (either here, or as a comment on the Trac ticket of where you're expecting to see innerHTML, but aren't? Currently, innerHTML is wired into Code Assist, so you should be seeing it.

    Thanks!
    --Michelle
    Aptana
  • Cross-platform is great.... as a dream. They never actually deliver what they need to deliver in real world circumstances. Take Firefox: It's great on Windows and soars on Linux, but sucks Egg Nog on Macs.

    The best applications, IMHO, are the ones were the company takes the time to make native versions of their applications using each platforms APIs. In this regard Adobe (and formerly Macromedia) rocked. While each platform had its own version of their apps, each app was designed and implemented using that platforms native APIs and frameworks so that the application would seamlessly fit into your workflow.

    Much is the same for text editors. Often, you'll find that the best one is the native one and, since you use a Mac, the one you should be trying out is TextMate. It kills everything thats come before it including SKEdit and Dreamweaver. It's pricey (about $50.00), but it's well worth the money. Just try it out... it comes with a free 30-day trial period. And during the trial you get full use of the application. Google around for some reviews of TextMate, you'll see that Mac and Web devs swear by it.
  • Great overview! We're working hard to address feature requests like the one's mentioned here. The IDE notifies you of product updates, so you can always download and start using it now and we'll let you know as we add more features. Be sure to also check out our Aptana TV site for screencasts: http://www.aptana.tv

    Thanks again!

    Paul Colton
    Aptana, Inc.
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