Move over TextMate, there’s a new editor for Mac OS X; Espresso by MacRabbit.
I’ve been testing out Espresso for a couple of months now, and I’m very impressed with it so far. In my opinion its targeted directly at TextMate users and brings some much needed functionality such as fantastic project support (built-in, rather than having to rely on Project+ like you currently do with TextMate), code navigator, snippets. It also has most of the functionality that makes TextMate so great such as syntax highlighting, code hinting and code completion.
Of course, TextMate has quite a number of features that Espresso doesn’t. For example, ActionScript/Flex compiler support to date, is far better in TextMate than Espresso.
Like TextMate, Espresso has the ability to be extended via Sugars. Sugars are basically the same as TextMate Bundles, but expressed in XML.
I’ve been dying to use Espresso on a regular basis in my ColdFusion projects, but without a ColdFusion Sugar that’s not been a reality.
A week or so ago, Jonathan Christopher released a basic ColdFusion Sugar for Espresso! It featured syntax highlighting only and as Jonathan didn’t have much time to devote towards feature implementation for the Sugar, so I decided to have ago myself.
I forked the Sugar on GitHub and have been adding features ever since. Feel free to download the ColdFusion Sugar and use it for your development. I’ll be adding features as I continue to learn how to write the Sugar (the documentation isn’t exactly great) and I plan on making Espresso a worthwhile alternative to CFEclipse and TextMate for ColdFusion development.
If you find any bugs, or have any feature requests just email me!
Filed under: coldfusion sugar
