Intro to HTML editors, page 3
Next on the menu... Bluefish
Bluefish initially feels like it is missing a lot of the glitz and glam of Quanta Plus. This might bother some from the very beginning, or it might win Bluefish a place in their hearts. When you start using Bluefish, it becomes clear that there are different motives and goals for the project. It is still an XHTML editor, but it caters to a different audience.
Bluefish is also released under the GPL, and runs on a number of *nix and related platforms, including OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OS X and Solaris. It's very lightweight (without sacrificing function) so it starts noticeably faster than Quanta Plus. Though geared for GNOME, it strives for compliance with as many GNOME and KDE user interface standards as possible (though we will mention here, out of fairness, that Quanta Plus when run on GNOME had virtually no issues either).
Bluefish supports a number of programming languages, such as PHP, XHTML/HTML, CSS and DocBook. There are handy scripts for Apache authentication, MySQL queries, and associating actions with various features on your website. Syntax highlighting and autoclose tags are optional, and we really liked that they were easy to find and activate/deactivate in the menu.
Document types were easily configured from the moment of document creation. We could easily pick HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Ruby or Pascal (among others) from the document menu.
There is the inclusion of a "Quick Bar" tool menu. The idea is that we load it with our most oft-used tags and functions. We think this is a great idea, and it makes customization a bit less involved than with Quanta Plus. If we have a tag we use a lot, we right click and add it to our Quick Bar. Problem is, unless we disable it in our Preferences, if we should leave it empty, Bluefish reminds us every time we start up that the menu is empty. In the big picture, it won't kill us. But clicking on that menu and finding it empty is faster and more effective at reminding us than a pop up when starting the application.
Document and project creation is pretty neat. Projects feel a lot more cohesive than in Quanta Plus, and we think this is because it's a lot more readily apparent how documents are created and fit together.
For instance, when we click our QuickStart icon (and choke at the number of meta tags it includes by default -- yikes!) we can add our link to our style sheet. If we've not created it yet? No worries. We can right click on the side pane and add a new document with the correct name, or we can go to our Document window and select a .css document type.
Then we can fire up our style sheet, and go to the CSS tab, and start adding our attributes. The input menu here feels much more intuitive than Quanta Plus.
The one nuisance thing about this dialog is that it only allows editing of one attribute at a time. It seems that for every tag that requires multiple attributes, the tag and attribute must be entered repeatedly. It writes all those individual entries for the same tag into your CSS file correctly, but it feels weird.
Remember how we said we liked split viewing? We do. Bluefish, sadly, can't do this. To preview, we need to use an external browser. Problem was, there was no Firefox option, and that's what we wanted to use. We could add it, but for some reason the browser would not open the files we wanted to preview, just our home page.
So we reverted to typing the location of our file in the address bar. Annoying, but it did work.
Remember how we said we liked split viewing? We do. Bluefish, sadly, can't do this. To preview, we need to use an external browser. Problem was, there was no Firefox option, and that's what we wanted to use. We could add it, but for some reason the browser would not open the files we wanted to preview, just our home page.
So we reverted to typing the location of our file in the address bar. Annoying, but it did work.
Bluefish also has decent reference files for HTML, CSS, PHP and Python. It allows for uploading of your projects through the gnome-vfs (though, like Quanta Plus, transport methods available may vary on what you've got installed). The search and replace function doesn't seem quite as easy to use or thorough, but there is the option to search all open files, which is probably more than sufficient for a great number of users. There is, of course, spell check, a close all tags function, and various types of code validation and clean up tools.
Both applications perform their tasks well. We'd recommend Bluefish for people with systems that are slower, or those who are editing a huge number of files at once, due to the way it handles memory. Bluefish is also great for "hit and run" type editing. Most functions are easy to access and it's intuitive enough that even more unusual edits are quick and easy.
Quanta Plus would most likely appeal to "visual" people. The strongest pull, for us, is the split view editing. If you edit this type of code all day long, and can work out the sometimes idiosyncratic way that Quanta Plus is laid out, the advantage of seeing updates on the fly makes this a strong candidate for daily use.
Neither really doing it for you? Next week, we'll take a look at a few of the less conventional editors out there for Linux.
Both applications perform their tasks well. We'd recommend Bluefish for people with systems that are slower, or those who are editing a huge number of files at once, due to the way it handles memory. Bluefish is also great for "hit and run" type editing. Most functions are easy to access and it's intuitive enough that even more unusual edits are quick and easy.
Quanta Plus would most likely appeal to "visual" people. The strongest pull, for us, is the split view editing. If you edit this type of code all day long, and can work out the sometimes idiosyncratic way that Quanta Plus is laid out, the advantage of seeing updates on the fly makes this a strong candidate for daily use.
Neither really doing it for you? Next week, we'll take a look at a few of the less conventional editors out there for Linux.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
