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Ok, so this is my third post in the P2PU: Webmaking 101 series.

Prior posts were:

  1. P2PU: Webmaking 101
  2. P2PU: Webmaking 101 – Writing HTML by Hand

P2PU: Webmaking 101 – Choose Your Weapon is the point where P2PU starts introducing the use of an editor for coding.

Again, it may seem I’m way ahead of the learning curve here, but I’m committed to finding something, in this course’s series of challenges, which re-introduces me to tags, ideas or techniques I haven’t used in a while.

The task for this challenge is to review the text editor, I’ve chosen to use for html composition. The intention of this challenge was pretty much to introduce newbies to different text editors.

Well, I’m pretty familiar with a long list of text editors. I’ve even been able to experience various text editors in multiple platforms (Apple OS X, Linux & Micro$lop Windoz).

My current editor of choice is Aptana STUDIO 3.0.

Aptana Logo

Aptana Logo

The professional, open source development tool for the open web – http://aptana.org

I guess, technically, Aptana is an IDE, similar to Eclipse, Komodo and Adobe’s Dreamweaver. Aptana can also be used from within the Eclipse IDE.

However, like every good IDE, a text editor is built in. So, I’m going to put a spin on Aptana so that it fits the criteria of this challenge.

I chose the Aptana text editor, due to its built-in IDE.

For me, Aptana has a few other benefits, like:

  • Syntax highlighting.
  • Built in browser technology specs (I.E. HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails, PHP & Python).
  • HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Code Assist.
  • Deployment Wizard.
  • Integrated Debugger.
  • Git Integration.
  • Built-in Terminal.
  • IDE Customization.

…and arguably the biggest benefit, is, while Aptana is comparable to Adobe’s Dreamweaver, Aptana STUDIO 3.0 doesn’t cost a dime!


The challenge suggested a post on the discussion page, about which text editor was best. I thought I could probably do better. So, I’ve included a Polldaddy poll, below:

[polldaddy poll=”5904882″]