HTML Editor Reviews | Reviews and Discussion of (X)HTML Coding Tools

Review: TSW WebCoder 2005

At first glance, I thought TSW WebCoder 2005 might replace WeBuilder 2006 as my editor of choice. It has almost all the features I look for in an editor, plus it’s lightweight and relatively inexpensive. Upon further inspection, however, TSW WebCoder 2005 lacks some polish. Regardless, it’s a solid editor, and I find it surprising that I’ve only just heard of it.

What I Like

• Code hinting and code completion for HTML, CSS, and PHP. You can add your own auto complete tags, as well.
• TSW’s method of editing syntax colouring is almost perfect. First, you can create and save multiple colour configurations/profiles. Second, there’s no colouring overlap. What I mean by that is that you only have to set HTML/PHP/CSS colours once, whereas in most other editors you colour HTML tags for an HTML profile and a PHP profile, or you set CSS colours for PHP, HTML, and CSS. TSW’s method makes so much more sense.
• Integrated MySQL database manager. Lets you connect to local and remote databases and view tables and table contents. You can also drag database and table names into your PHP files when creating SQL queries.
• In depth Projects Panel, which shows folders, files, specified project colours (in hex format + visible colour swatch), Templates, and databases.
• With WebCoder scripts, you can create new controls, buttons, views, and tool bars. According to the documentation, “Most of what you can do with a control in Delphi, will be possible when scripted in WebCoder as well.”
• Basic code snippet support.
• Good price and a small download.

Gripes

• Can’t reorder document tabs.
• Code completion for PHP requires you to press Ctrl+Space first to bring up a list of functions (in other words, code hinting isn’t automatic with PHP).
• Code snippets aren’t dynamic (i.e., no replacement tokens, just saved bits of text).
• If you match up your local server and your remote server with the same directory structure, TSW’s FTP is supposed to upload files to the corresponding directory automatically (ala Dreamweaver). However, every time I tried to upload a file, I got an error: “WebCoder has perfomed an illegal action…”
• No code collapse.

Wishlist

• Automatic PHP code hinting.
• Fixed FTP.
• Dynamic code snippets.

Overall

I’m not sure why I hadn’t heard of TSW WebCoder 2005 before. It’s a good editor — one that I’m sure could become a real competitor in the Windows HTML editor market. I suggest downloading a copy of the demo and playing around with it. Let’s hope Tanggaard Software keeps it going.

12 Comments

1. Wow, just found this site in my referer log. I’m very impressed with the amount and quality of reviews here :). Thank you for the kind words about WebCoder. I’m happy that you like it, while sorry that you were experiencing a couple of problems. However, I’m glad to tell you that most of the items on your “gripes” list will be fixed for next release. Actually, several of them (reorder document tabs, dynamic codesnippets and code folding) is available in TSW WebPad.NET (a light version of WebCoder), which is currently being beta tested. It will be released within the next month, and next version of WebCoder will of course have all the same features, as well as a bunch of new ones :) Keep up the good work!

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