15-Minute Reviews :: Multi-Edit Lite 2006 v10.03.00

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s title is Multi-Edit Lite 2006 version 10.03.00 by Multi Edit Software, Inc. – A text editor for those who program.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Multi-Edit Lite 2006 is a programmer’s text editor with powerful features designed to deliver the ease of operation and timesaving functions you need to meet demanding deadlines.

With Multi-Edit Lite 2006, you can manipulate text with unsurpassed ease and compile source files while you are still within Multi-Edit Lite 2006. Your ability to handle files is greatly enhanced. Up to 2048 files can be edited simultaneously, and Multi-Edit Lite 2006 effortlessly handles large files with line lengths up to 16K!

You will not spend a lot of time getting up to speed with Multi-Edit Lite 2006 either. You will be doing productive work very quickly with the aid of our intuitive user interface. Drop down menus and special Key Assignments are available that will help you execute commands in a heartbeat. Plus, features like our smart indent, template editing, and construct matching make our language support second to none.”

Quick Pros

• Macro functionality handy
• Command maps handy for those already comfortable with another editor
• Bookmarking useful for longer files
• Powerful search functionality in the form of regular expressions
• Hex mode handy for manipulating data or other filetypes

Quick Cons

• Interface feels dated and it uncomfortable to use
• Awkward and time-consuming to use, even with keyboard shortcuts memorized
• Open dialog box awkward – Mask defaults to last opened file, even if you used ‘All files’
• No autocomplete functionality to speed process – No tag files included

Expansion

With the ever-growing market of computers and the needs constantly changing, there is growth in the programming field. WThere is a need for tools more in-line with current programming techniques as well as improvement in coding speed as well.

This application has some functionality that is useful it appears. The macro functionality offers you the ability to load hand-coded macros, or also record your own macros right in the application. Unfortunately loading files in as macros is awkward at best, and the recording functionality you really need to incorporate a keystroke you your macros because it is too many clicks just to activate one manually.

An interesting feature here is the command maps. For those coming from other interfaces, there is a list of other common interfaces which this application will emulate its keystroke settings for different actions. This could be very useful for those coming from emacs or others who preferred their editing techniques compared to the more modern techniques; Emacs was pretty efficient, when you got around its learning curve. I didn’t have enough time to test the different command sets however.

There are also other features too which I’ll quickly touch on a few. Bookmarking is a useful feature in that on longer files, or files you just flip around quite a bit, you can set bookmarks to be able to quickly head to another part of the file quickly and easily. The search (and search and replace) functionality is also very powerful in that you can not only use regexps for searhing, but a lot of options as well when it comes to searching as well. There is also a hex editor, handy for those working with data or compiled files regularly too so that you don’t have to switch to another application.

The interface and general usage of this application is unfortunately uncomfortable to use and dated. I found it awkward to work on a website in this application. There is no built-in code completion for speeding the process of building nor is there keystroke shortcuts for pasting in common phrases. You could write a macro or try to find a tags file, but with nothing built-in, it is not pleasant in my eyes. I found that even with the common menu items memorized that I still worked at using this application, rather than it work for me. The open dialog box is awful as well. When you open a file type, the mask then resets the file mask to that file type. The next time you bring up the open dialog box, you end up having to change back to All Files (.) or to the file type you like, causing more time to be wasted.

As mentioned above, there is no auto-complete functionality built-in. There is the tags functionality which I assume is based off the same idea, but there is no tag files included nor is there any easily locatable on the author’s website, which is disappointing, concidering how far into the apparent lifecycle of the title we’re trying here.

Final Verdict

All in all I’m not overly impressed with this application. I prefer to hand code most if not all my web pages and I’m always on the lookout for new tools. While the features here show great promise, the act of actually working on code within this application feels like an chore in itself. I could see its benefit for those who are coming from some of the other interfaces such as emacs, but honestly there are better solutions geared specifically towards the tasks at hand for you. For free though, you can give it a try; It didn’t eat any of my files nor did it crash at any point and your mileage may vary compared to mine. As for paying $49.99, I could never warrant paying that much for an application similar to this when there is so many free applications out there that do more and feel less awkward.

Some alternatives are Eclipse (Open Source – Multi-language support), Aptana (Free – Supports many web languages), and Notepad++ (Open Source) are a good place to look for comperable IDEs.

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, August 29, 2007