We often get asked about what’s the best code editor for modifying WordPress files? Well you can use any plain text editor such as NotePad, however there are better editors out there with features like syntax highlighting, advanced find and replace, FTP integration, etc. In this article, we will show you some of the best code editors available for Mac and Windows users.
Best free WYSIWYG HTML editors for Mac OS X By SK 2 comments Last updated August 7, 2013 WYSIWYG stands for “What You See Is What You Get”, which means that the editing display closely corresponds the appearance of the page displayed to the end-user. NetBeans 8.0 is another good Code editor For PC Windows and MAC. It is available for Windows, MAC and Linux and support both 32 and 64 bit OS. It provide code editor for C, C++, Java, HTML, CSS, PHP and also include server side scripting JSP with the help of Apache Tom Cat server. NetBeans 8.0 is free to download from its official site.
1. Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free and open source code editor for Windows. It is easy to use for beginners and highly powerful for advanced users. It comes with syntax highlighting for many languages including PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It also comes with a built-in FTP plugin that allows you to connect to your server and edit files directly without leaving the editor.
2. TextWrangler
TextWrangler came out of the popular BBEdit text editor. This powerful and feature rich text editor is a freeware. It comes with a very intuitive user interface that makes it super easy to browse files and work on projects. It has advanced search and replace tools, and it can directly edit and save files to FTP, SFTP servers. It offers syntax highlighting for many programing languages, fully supports utf-8, and even allows you to convert character encoding of text documents.
3. Coda
Coda is perhaps one of the most loved web development and programming editor for Mac. It is famous for its ridiculously good looking interface, and smart powerful features. It allows you to edit local or remote files, manage projects, work on multiple files at once with easy switching between tabs. It has built in terminal, debugger, web kit preview and inspector, and so many awesome features.
Code costs $99 for a single license but it is totally worth the price.
4. Sublime Text
Sublime Text is a cross-platform code editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with all the features you would expect from a powerful code editor and then some more. It looks beautiful and you can tweak the appearance to make it more comfortable for you. Sublime Text comes with advanced code editor features which allow you to autofill, autocomplete, reference function in a file, multiple selection, split editing, and many more.
Sublime Text is available on trial and a single license will cost you $70.
5. TextMate
TextMate promises to bring Apple’s approach to operating systems into a text editor. TextMate is a simple yet feature rich code editor for Mac. Easy clip board management, sophisticated find and replace, autocompletion, foldable code blocks, are some of the powerful features of TextMate.
TextMate is available for $60. It is also available as a free download.
6. Atom
Atom is a cross-platform code editor created by developers for developers. It is open source, and much like WordPress, Atom users can submit packages and themes for the software. It looks pretty and you can change the appearance by installing themes. It comes with built-in package manager to extend it, smart autocompletion, file system browser, multiple panes, find and replace.
7. BBEdit
BBEdit is a beautiful code and HTML editor for Mac. It comes with all the advanced features of a powerful code editor. Syntax highlighting, advanced find and replace, autocompletion, quick lookup, multiple tabs, splittable editing windows and much more.
BBEdit costs $49.99, you can also download a free trial version.
8. UltraEdit
UltraEdit is a powerful HTML and Code editor available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It comes with a built-in file comparison utility, autocompletion, advanced layout, multi-tab, multi-pane editors, and syntax highlighting for the most popular programming languages.
UltraEdit costs $79.5 with a limited free trial version available for download.
9. Vim
Vim is an advanced text editor that brings the power of Vi to an equally powerful feature set. Vim is open source and available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Vim is so powerful and advanced that it is considered to be an IDE in its own way.
10. Brackets
Brackets was founded by Adobe to push web editors into the new age. It claims to be an advanced code editor that understands web designs. Brackets can take hints from a PSD file and allows you to write code faster and better. Brackets is open source and available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
11. CoffeeCup HTML Editor
CoffeeCup HTML Editor is an easy to use HTML editor for Windows. It supports PHP, HTML, Markdown, CSS and allows you to use autocomplete, syntax validation, semantic code, among many other features. CoffeeCup HTML editor is not the ideal code editor for many other languages but if you want to learn writing PHP, HTML, and CSS, then Coffee Cup HTML editor is a good place to start.
CoffeeCup HTML Editor costs $69 with a limited free trial version available for download.
12. Espresso
Espresso is a web development tool for Mac. It comes with a powerful code editor and built-in CSSEdit. It comes with beautiful interface and advanced features like drag and drop code snippets, code folding, navigator, live styling and X-ray preview.
Espresso is available for $75.
We hope this article helped you find the perfect code editor for your needs. You may also want to take a look at our WordPress theme cheat sheet for beginners
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Every year, many new Code Editors are launched, and developer finds it challenging to choose one. Following is a curated list of Top 15 code editors for Windows and Mac platform. All the editors in the list are Free to use. The code editor could be standalone or integrated into an IDE.
1) Notepad++
Best Html Css Editor For Windows
Notepad++ is a popular free to use code editor written in C++. It uses pure win32 API which offers greater execution speed and small program size. It runs only in the window's environment, and it uses GPL License.
Platform: Windows
Price: Free
Features:
- Support syntax highlighting for languages like PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS
- Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion
- Macro recording and playback
- User-defined Syntax highlighting and folding
- Entirely customizable GUI
- Multi-view and Multi-Language support
Download link: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
2) Atom
Atom is useful code editor tool preferred by programmers due to its simple interface compared to the other editors. Atom users can submit packages and them for the software.
Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux
Price: Free
Features:
- Package Manager Integrated for Plugins support
- The feature of smart autocompletion
- Supports Command Palette
- Multiple panes
- Allow cross-platform editing
Download link:https://atom.io/
3) Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code is an open source code editor software developed by Microsoft. It offers built-in support for TypeScript, JavaScript, and Node.js. It's autocompleted with IntelliSense features provides smart completions based on variable types, essential modules, and function definitions.
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Price: Free
Features:
- Easy working with Git and other SCM (Software Configuration management) providers
- Code refactoring & debugging
- Easily extensible and customizable
Download link:https://code.visualstudio.com/
4) Brackets
Brackets is a lightweight tool developed by Adobe. It is an open source text editor which is free to download. It allows you to a toggle between your source code and the browser view.
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Price: Free
Features:
- Quick Edit UIfeature puts context-specific code and tools inline
- Offers live preview, preprocessor support, and inline editors
- Pleasant looking UI
- Especially developed tool for macOS
- It comes with the inbuilt extension manager for fast & effective extension management.
Best Html Css Javascript Editor For Mac
Download link:http://brackets.io/
5) NetBeans
NetBeans is an open-source code editor tool for developing with Java, PHP, C++, and other programming languages. With this editor, code analyzers, and converters. It allows you to upgrade your applications to use new Java 8 language constructs.
Platforms: Mac Windows Linux
Price: Free
Features:
- Easy & Efficient Project Management
- Offers fast & Smart Code Editing
- Rapid User Interface Development
- Helps you to write bug-free code
Download link:https://netbeans.org
6) Bluefish
Bluefish a is a cross-platform editor is a speedy tool which can handle dozens of files simultaneously. The tool allows developers to conduct remote editing. This code editor tool offers many options to s programmers and web developers, to write websites, scripts, and programming code.
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac Windows Linux
Features:
- Loads hundreds of files within seconds
- Auto-recovery of changes in modified documents after a crash, kill or shutdown.
- Project support feature helps you to work efficiently on multiple projects.
- Unlimited undo/redo functionality.
Download link: http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/index.html
7) VIM
Vim is an advanced text editor open source tool which is also considered to be an IDE in its way. This tool allows managing your text editing activities with vim editors and UNIX System which can be used on-premise or online.
Price: Free
Platform: Linux
Features:
- Extensive plugin support
- Powerful search and replace
- Integrates with many tools
- Macro recording and playback
- Support for hundreds of programming languages and file formats
Download link: https://www.vim.org/
8) Geany
Geany is a text editor which uses GTK+ toolkit. It also has certain basic features of an integrated development environment. The tool supports many filetypes and has some nice features.
Price: Free
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Features:
- Allows you to add a note for applying the indent settings in the project preferences
- Navigating through the source code
- Allows popup menu on message window notebooks and sidebar
- Show status message on attempt to execute empty context action
Download link: https://www.geany.org
9) Komodo Edit
Komodo edit is an easy to use and powerful code editing tool. It allows you to do debugging, unit testing, code refactoring. It also provides code profile, plus integrations with other technologies like Grunt, PhoneGap, Docker, Vagrant and many more.
Price: Free Trial
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Features:
- Multi-Language Editor
- A lot of contemporary color schemes
- Native Unicode support and Unicode compatibility checking
- Easily integrates into the desktop environment.
Download link: https://www.activestate.com/komodo-edit
10) Emacs
Emacs is a Unix based text editor tool which is used by programmers, engineers, students, and system administrators. It allows you to add, modify, delete, insert, words, letters, lines, and other units of text.
Price: Free
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Features:
- Complete built-in documentation
- Full Unicode support for many human scripts
- Highly customizable, using Emacs Lisp code.
- A packaging system for installing and downloading extensions
Download link: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
11) jEdit
jEdit, a code editor program which is written in Java. This open source tool supports hundreds of plugins and macros. It offers a large collection of plugins maintained by a worldwide developer team.
Features:
- Built-in macro language & extensible plugin architecture
- Allows copy and paste with an unlimited number of clipboards
- You can download plugins with the help of the plugin manager.
- Register contents are saved across editing sessions.
- Allows auto indent, and syntax highlighting over 200 languages
Price: Free
Platform: Mac, Windows & Linux
Download link: http://www.jedit.org/
12) TextMate
TextMate is a versatile plain text editor for mac with unique and innovative features. The tool offers support for many programming languages, writing prose in structured formats such as blogging, running SQL queries, writing screenplays, etc.
Price: Free
Platform: MAC
Features:
- Auto-Indent for Common Actions
- CSS-like Selectors to find the Scope of Actions and Settings
- Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
- Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
- Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
- Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
Download link: http://macromates.com/
13) gedit
Gedit tool is designed as a general-purpose text editor. It offers simple and eases to use GUI. It includes features for editing source code and structured text like markup languages.
Price: Free
Platforms: Mac & Windows
Features:
- Support for syntax highlighting for languages like C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, etc.
- Editing files from remote locations
- Support for text wrapping and auto indentation
- Search and replace with the support of regular expressions
- A flexible plugin system which allows you to add new features
Download link: https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit
14) Light Table
Light Table is an IDE and text editor tool for software development. The tool offers fast feedback and allowing instant execution, debugging and access to documentation.
Price: Free
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Features:
- Inline Evaluation
- Light Table is a lightweight, clean, and sleek interface.
- Powerful editing and plugin manager
- The feature of println to keep track of critical values in your code
Download link: http://lighttable.com/
15) Blue Griffon
BlueGriffon is an open source HTML editor powered by Gecko, which is Firefox's rendering engine. It has a simple interface and most usual features needed to create web pages that are compliant with W3C web standards.
Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux
Features:
- Easy to change the color of font or to adjust the border style
- Opens Tabs from Last Session
- Shortcuts for CSS Editing
- Multiple Themes for Source View
Download link: http://bluegriffon.org