DesignAday

My name is Jack Moffett. I am an Interaction Designer with over ten years of experience. According to Herb Simon, that makes me an expert, so I must have something worth sharing. I have started this venture as an exercise to spur critical thinking about my chosen profession. I hope that others may find it thought provoking as well.

DesignAday will present a brief thought about Design every weekday.
Jan 29
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Designer's Toolbelt: TextWrangler

While I prefer to leave implementation to the developers, I do have to muck with code on a regular basis. For HTML, I rely on Dreamweaver. I’ve already written about CSSEdit. When it comes to anything else, such as XML, a DTD, or the occasional JavaScript, I pull up TextWrangler.

Bare Bones Software’s TextWrangler is a very simple, yet powerful text editor. It will open any file you throw at it, and can automatically format common types, like XML and HTML. It has robust find & replace capabilities, and can diff files. It can perform basic text transformations, like detabbing and zapping gremlins. It also provides many display options, such as line numbering and soft-wrapping.

It’s a free tool. If you want more functionality, its older brother BBEdit will color syntax, work on files directly over FTP, and much more. Both are available only on the Mac.