Top 10 Best Free Mac OS Text Editors For Web Designers

A text editor is a crucial part of any operating system. It lets you view and edit basic text files, and take notes, without going into the complex formatting of word processors. Plain text editors have a lot of advantages over MS Office and other Office tools with regards to certain functions. They can be opened on almost system. Since they don’t upgrade, they remain portable even in ancient machines and operating systems such as Windows 2000. Also they can be edited quickly and efficiently, and in batches.

Every operating system ships with its own plain text editor. Even the obsolete DOS had one of its own. We are familiar with Windows Notepad and Text Edit on Mac OS X. but the problem with text editors is that sometimes they can be too basic. Being totally devoid of any sort of features and facilities except the plain reading, writing, and saving, text editors are occasionally just not enough to cope with the demands of documentation.

So how can we take advantage of the benefits of a text editor, without having to put up with the disadvantages? Well if you are a Mac user, you are in luck. We have compiled a list of ten helpful text editors for Mac OS X, which can be helpful to you if you are a Web Designer, or in fact in any other profession where you have to use plain text.

1. Vim

Vim is an easy to use text editor that is available for Windows as well as Mac. Its features include transparent backgrounds, tabs, and full screen editing options. Reading or editing text is really easy with Vim, because of syntax highlighting. Vim is available for free download.

2. Bluefish

Bluefish is a text editing software that supports many programming languages like Java, Javascript, C, SQL, HTML, XHTML,, Perl, CSS, Cold Fusion, XML, Python, Ruby, PHP, and JSP. It is an excellent tool for editing websites, particularly dynamic and interactive ones.

3. Text Wrangler

Text Wrangler is another great tool for editing plain text on Mac OS X, from the Bare Bones software. Though originally it started out as a commercial software, it is now a freeware and can be downloaded without having to spend any money.

4. XEmacs

This is an open source text editor for Mac, and it is also an application development system. It can be customized to suit the needs of the user. XEmacs have an extremely modern and state of the art graphic user interface.

5. jEdit

In spite of being a freeware, jEdit can give any expensive text editor a run for its money. It has some really cool features that will be of use to any serious programmer. But it has a simple user interface that makes it accessible even for non-technical people.

6. Eddie

This editor, meant for Mac OS X and Linux Gnome, can edit a number of languages such as Javascript, HTML, Ruby, Lua, Python, and many such others. Eddie is an extraordinarily powerful text editor, but it is lightweight and modern rather than bulky, and lets you do your editing in a normal text window mode.

7. Mad Edit

Mad Edit has some really useful functions, such as syntax highlighting, encoding, and word wrap. Through Mad Edit, you can edit your files through text, column, or hex mode. This editor is open source, and can be used cross platform. It is written in c++

8. Komodo Edit

Based on the Komodo IDE, the Komodo Edit software has some amazing features such as call tips, auto-complete, syntax coloring, syntax checking, Emacs key bindings, and Vi emulations. It is a cross platform tool, and supports a multitude of languages.

9. NEdit

NEdit is an ideal tool for people who need to use a text editor professionally and extensively. The graphic user interface is quite simple to follow. While some of the features are heavy duty and can be used to write code in a wide variety of languages, NEdit can also be used by people who just need to read or edit a block of text.