UltraEdit for Mac nears beta... First look | Hacker News Reader

UltraEdit for Mac nears beta... First look

ultraedit.com

17 pointsneovive31 comments

I think most Mac users (okay, i'm generalising) have become used to their software looking good. There are already many editors for OS X that have simple, elegant interfaces and that follow Mac interface guidelines. e.g. Textmate, Coda, Espresso, even Xcode and MacVim to a point.

In my opinion Ultraedit for Mac is ugly and looks like what it is, a port of some Windows software. I'm sure it's a fantastically powerful editor and this might seem shallow, but this is enough to stop me from using it. If I'm going to stare at an interface all day it needs to be visually pleasing.

I'm sure part of the reason for this is an increase in their clients asking for a Mac port. A Windows user moving to Mac might like to keep the things he's used to if he can. Having more than one test editor isn't a bad thing for the Mac. Having software ported over just makes the transition easier for those that want to move over. It's a good thing. =)

If you can't turn off that top toolbar, it's a no-go for me from the start. Using up ~10% of extremely valuable real estate for buttons that you should have memorized the keyboard shortcuts for? No thanks.

In general it appears to be very wasteful of screen real estate, and to be poorly thought out from a UE perspective. Buttons and fonts are bigger than they need to. There's some extremely quizzical usage of padding, as well.

Usually that rounded rectangle in the top right hides the top toolbar and I would expect the same behavior in this case.

"UltraEdit for Mac also accommodates the selection of predefined toolbars for macros, scripting, search, and user defined toolbars. You can of course choose whether or not to display them."

I hope that means the top one too.

I am looking at a picture of Textmate. I don't really consider that "good looking". I use MacVim. I don't really consider that "good looking" either. It is a first shot at getting UE to the Mac. I am hoping that means they will be open to suggestions. I have signed up for the beta and I will certainly be letting them know when things aren't Mac "like".

I loved UE in 2000 when it was the best text editor on Windows. Now I use Textmate and honestly UE on Mac looks like it hasn't evolved much in the last 10 years.

To be fair, TextMate hasn't evolved much in the last 5 years.

UltraEdit is popular on Windows because most other text editors for Windows are quite bad. Why would anyone want to use UltraEdit on a Mac?

Serious question: who on Windows is really using text editors? If you're a programmer using Windows, chances are good you're using a Microsoft stack and thus very likely Visual Studio. For me, text editors on Windows are nothing more than scratch pads.

Maybe I'm just biased, but if you're not using Microsoft technology it seems like you'd be better off with a Unix-like OS, where awesome text editors are plentiful. Maybe there really are enough people out there using non-MS tech but still prefer Windows?

Plenty of programmers run Windows without being tied to a Microsoft stack; web developers, for example.

Believe it or not, there are many people who prefer Windows - while Unix-like OSes may be better for some things, many people use the same computer for a wide range of things, programming being just one of them.

I'm an example of this. I'm a .NET web developer but if I need to make a quick view (css/html/etc) change, I'll fire up Notepad++. It's way faster than firing up good ol' VS. NP++ is also good for more complicated/repetitive text editing.

I'm also a .NET developer. But your usage there to me falls under what I called "scratch pad". As in NP++ is not your main means of writing code. I always have NP++ running so I can throw things into it as needed.

Fair enough. I was truly just asking the question, not trying to inject judgment into it (although I guess some judgment was inevitable).

Serious question: Are there really that many web devs who don't use a *nix? It seems to me, as an outsider, MS web stacks are relatively rare. I would think it would be easier to work on the platform you are deploying on.

I believe what gmurphy is referring to is the dev machine, not server.

Yes, I know of many web devs (myself included) who use windows on my personal machine, with a lamp/RoR stack, and then host on linux boxes.

Me. I use Notepad++. About every 3 weeks I try to find a better on but I keep coming back to Notepad++.

I also use FlashDevelop for AS3 work - its very nice.

btw, I also have a Mac and Linux box on my desk but I stick to Windows - I've tried a bunch of editors on those platforms and I prefer editing on Windows (although I do cheat a little and use msys for fast greps).

After using Windows and UltraEdit for quite some time and switching to a Mac last year, I found myself missing some of the flexibility and "familiarity" offered by UE. Clearly, overtime, I moved on to other editors, but learning the new tools took time. Was it time worth spending? Probably -- but it was also unproductive time. If a Mac version of UE was available last year, I would have been my first purchase just to ease the transition.

Overall, this is a great opportunity for IDM to capitalize on the large share of developers switching from Mac to Windows. IDM also recently released a native Linux version as well and is dedicated to producing native versions of UE on all three platforms. I really hope they are successful and that more software vendors begin following a similar path. Adobe anyone ;)

I'm one of those idiots (happily, for the most part) running windows as a desktop OS. I use the ancient Codewright editor (and ultraedit). Mostly embedded stuff, so no VS here. My primary toolchain (closed source proprietary stuff) doesn't run under linux, so windows it is.

It's not for me, (mate & vim have yet to fail me), but always nice to see development.

Anyone else think it looks like it was made for MacOS 10.1 though?

Yeah, it does have the Java Swing Look. Which is to say it almost gets it right, but there are quite a handful of things that look alien. Us Mac people are nitpicky.

Yes we are. I posted a comment about "looks" just now. I told them to look at Coda for a nice looking UI. But it is a first go so maybe once they get it over changing the UI will come as well.

I am happy to see this, but I will withhold judgment until I see it for myself. Ultra Edit on Windows could be a bit of a beast a times.

Text editors on the Mac have stalled in recent years. TextMate 2 (also known as TextMate Forever) has been in the offing for years now. Coda is unstable. JEdit has poor OS integration. Eclipse is great for a heavy IDE, but too bloated for basic editing.

TextMate is still one of the best editors available, and I still use it for all of my Python development, but it has gotten way too old, and has long fallen behind the OS so that you could hardly call it tightly integrated.

Is this the replacement for TextMate on the Mac I have been waiting for?

Even with its flaws and the frustratingly long wait for TextMate 2, I have yet to find something that works better for me.

I actually really miss Ultraedit. I think it's the only app I miss since switching to a mac. Things I haven't found in 1 app yet

    * Everything is keyboard driven. Most mac apps still need a lot of keyboard.
    * It has SSH/FTP integration
    * It was not too buggy.

I currently use Coda, but it crashes too often, and is less powerful.

Did you try TextMate? I hear its very good.

I heard a lot of good things about it, but it doesn't have the ability to work on remote files via SSH or (S)FTP. I might try it with an extra program, but it feels like a hassle.

You can mount SSH volumes with MacFUSE

Mac users; no love for BBEdit?

http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/

There's stripped-down, gratis version called TextWrangler too.

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

If I had to use a Mac, I'd be all over that. Love it on windows, but I'm still using Codewright as my primary editor.

That is an awesome thing. I love UE on Windows.

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