Tools: IDE's and more

Originally published 

Mon 9 Feb 2009

Editors Notes

The first three tools here are still things I use regularly.  Aptana is in version 3 or higher now and XMLPad and Diffmerge have just been solid tools to have around for a long time.  Flex, something I'm running across a lot in my review of my old blog articles, is fading now as a distant memory.  It was a tremendous idea at one time but the last I heard Adobe had pretty much killed it off.  I could be wrong, I've not had need of using it for years.

Original Post

Several gentle reminders lately to the fact that I've been short on technical content have arrived from various sources. I have also been learning a lot lately thanks to the efforts of Jake Howlett and his super flex introduction. As I've had a lot of xml to work with as well as a lot of varied development, the following short list of new tools you should give a look came to mind today.

Aptana - The community edition is powerful enough to be very useful for CSS, Javascript and more. I used it extensively for a month or so with the built in jquery support. It comes with a pro version 30 day trial and that, so far as I can tell, buys you a few more project start up options and JAXTER (server side JavaScript) support but the community edition is powerful enough. Based on Eclipse.

XMLPad - there is a simple xml pad type tool available for windows, which is what I was looking for when Google turned this up. I downloaded it and love it for a quick, light-weight, XML browser and editor. Very useful for analyzing and editing static XML or browsing its structure. Free!

DiffMerge - from SourceGear, more use for analysis than coding, but very very nice for comparing files and folders to find those elusive little errors. Free!

It goes without saying that I've been playing with FlexBuilder (60 day trial) as well. Will probably be getting the pro version through work as it's definitely not free. But, that brings to mind that most of these new IDEs are taking advantage of the Eclipse base. Running Same Time in Eclipse, plus Flex Builder 3, plus Aptana (I run Notes in basic mode as the eclipse version has yet to win me over) is too much for my lowely 2 GB laptop. Adding more memory probably would help, but Win XP only will make use of 3 GB from what I hear. So, memory utilization has to be considered when loading up a lot of new tools, which is why I like the smaller specific purpose tools so much over the larger general purpose IDEs. Note that with Aptana you can download it as an eclipse plugin to add to your existing instance of Eclipse, but your mileage may vary. I'm not sure what performance would be like with Domino + Aptana or Flex Builder + Aptana plugin.