A short while ago I wrote an article discussing Codepress, and some of the problems I had with it (link to Codepress Problems). There were other issues that came up as well over the past few weeks, but I found a different javascript-based highlighter called Editarea. Editarea appears to have been around about the same amount of time as Codepress, except that it seems to be harder to find. Anyways, a short table of some of the features that they both have/don’t have.
| Codepress | Editarea | |
| Syntax Highlighting | ||
| Syntax Highlighting (web things like HTML, CSS, JS) | Yes | Yes |
| Switch syntax highlighting “On the fly” | Yes | No |
| Convienence Factors | ||
| Auto Complete | Yes | No |
| Auto Indent | No | Yes |
| Change Tab Size | No | No |
| CTRL-S support | Simple patch | Simple patch, has save button |
| Find/Replace | No | Yes |
| Indent selected blocks of text | Complex patch | Yes |
| Show Cursor Information (line, column) | No | Yes |
| Word Wrap | No | No |
| Copy/Paste | Removes tabs | Original Text |
| Feel | ||
| Speed | Quick | Slow |
| Bugs | Stable | Stable |
| Misc | ||
| Dynamic Line Numbers | No | Yes |
| Browser Support | IE, Firefox, Opera | IE, Firefox, Opera |
| Ease of integration | Easy, has install notes | Easy, has more documentation and options |
So, who wins? Right now, I say Editarea is winning, since Find/Replace, good copy/paste, and block indenting are all critical features that you don’t realize you’re missing until they’re gone. However, I feel that in the future both editors will continue to improve significantly. Hopefully they solve the tab size problem.. 🙂
Note: While writing this, I found yet another syntax highlighting editor with no official name at http://marijn.haverbeke.nl/highlight/ . This one isn’t quite as nice looking as Editarea or Codepress, BUT it does appear to do word-wrapping nicely. I’ll have to look into it more.
Hi,
I’m the developper of EditArea and I just want to say it is possible to replace tab by spaces with the init option ‘replace_tab_by_spaces’. And as far as I know EditArea is working with Opera 9.
Just my 2 cents 😉
Christophe Dolivet