Tiffany B. Brown

a mish-mosh of stuff

Aptana reaches 1.0, announces paid pro edition

Aptana, one of my favorite open source text editors, has reached its 1.0 milestone, re-naming the product Aptana Studio (née Aptana IDE) and adding a supported, professional version for an introductory price of $99 (regular price $199).

What do you get in the pro edition that’s not available in the community version?

  • JSON support
  • Support for secure FTP connections (via SSH & SSL)
  • JavaScript debugging for Internet Explorer
  • Project reporting engine
  • Priority support for one year
  • Access to preview and nightly builds

Earlier, no-cost releases of Aptana supported SFTP server connections. I’m disappointed to see that change with the release of a professional version.

Aptana is, without question, one of the best front-end development environments available (I haven’t used its server-side language features much). At $99, it hits a sweet-spot between affordable text editors like Panic’s Coda (Mac only; currently $79; regularly $99), BBEdit (Mac-only; $125), or NoteTab (Window only; $29.95) and pricier editors such as Dreamweaver (Mac / Win; $399).

At its full $199 price, however, it becomes harder to justify its purchase. For $100 less, Coda gives you many of Aptana’s core features and adds some sexy bits (like a built-in shell emulator and CSS color picker) of its own. For $74 less, BBEdit gives you a wider range of language support and a deliciously uncluttered interface. Plus there are some powerful free text editors such as jEdit (Java-based; cross-platform) and HTML-Kit (Windows only) that are good enough for many developers.

What’s your take? Have you used Aptana? Would you consider a professional license? Are you too wedded to your current text editor to switch?

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  • http://mattwilcox.net/ Matt Wilcox

    Aptana’s been my editor of choice for some time now, having edged out jEdit about six months ago. I’m pretty impressed with the 1.0 branch, though there are still a few niggles, including two new one’s I’ve noticed since upgrading this evening:

    1) jQuery support appears to have mysteriously vanished, which is a bummer because I was going to try and figure out how you use the Code Assist in existing projects (I never did figure it out).
    2) Word Wrap has been removed because they can’t get a stable version.

    On the whole though, it’s very nice, and I appreciate the finer control over code formatting. As for the Pro features, I don’t need any of them yet. In the future it’s possible the JSON support and IE JS debugger might be worth shelling out for – but as I’m a JS newbie at the moment, the Community version has every kind of sparkle I could ever desire.

  • http://mattwilcox.net Matt Wilcox

    Aptana’s been my editor of choice for some time now, having edged out jEdit about six months ago. I’m pretty impressed with the 1.0 branch, though there are still a few niggles, including two new one’s I’ve noticed since upgrading this evening:

    1) jQuery support appears to have mysteriously vanished, which is a bummer because I was going to try and figure out how you use the Code Assist in existing projects (I never did figure it out).
    2) Word Wrap has been removed because they can’t get a stable version.

    On the whole though, it’s very nice, and I appreciate the finer control over code formatting. As for the Pro features, I don’t need any of them yet. In the future it’s possible the JSON support and IE JS debugger might be worth shelling out for – but as I’m a JS newbie at the moment, the Community version has every kind of sparkle I could ever desire.

  • http://mattwilcox.net/ Matt Wilcox

    Oh, and for us British people, Aptana is an absolute steal! We are so used to the $ to £ conversion being nothing more than a (absolutely infuriating) change of symbol, whilst leaving the numbers alone. Well, with the conversion rates at the moment that means we pay roughly £25 for Aptana Pro – as opposed to the £393 Dreamweaver costs us…

    https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?store=OLS-UK&view=ols_prod&category=/Applications/Dreamweaver&distributionMethod=FULL&nr=0

    So please, don’t complain about the prices US people pay for software. People living in the UK pay almost exactly twice as much for exactly the same product. *waves fist in the air at greedy companies*

  • http://mattwilcox.net Matt Wilcox

    Oh, and for us British people, Aptana is an absolute steal! We are so used to the $ to £ conversion being nothing more than a (absolutely infuriating) change of symbol, whilst leaving the numbers alone. Well, with the conversion rates at the moment that means we pay roughly £25 for Aptana Pro – as opposed to the £393 Dreamweaver costs us…

    https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?store=OLS-UK&view=ols_prod&category=/Applications/Dreamweaver&distributionMethod=FULL&nr=0

    So please, don’t complain about the prices US people pay for software. People living in the UK pay almost exactly twice as much for exactly the same product. *waves fist in the air at greedy companies*