Hi

I've trying to persuade myself to by CoffeeCup HTML editor. I've been using MS Visual Studio for about 3 years now on part-time basis and find that the editor's IntelliSense functions are not as good. This makes it hard for me to justify investing in a Licence at the moment.

Please are you able to comment on each of my concerns :-

1,The IntelliSense does not automatically show a description of what each type and attribute does.

2.If you manually type <h1> for example, then the closing </h1> does not automatically insert into the edittor.

3.Suppose you type <h1 and then press return, this inserts <h1></h1> ok bu the cursor is focused within the <h1 element when most developers would find it more useful if the cursor was left in the middle eg just after the <h1> part so that content can be added. Ok, this might not be true more for some html elements than others but the cursor is alway left hanging inside the opening element. This make it awquard to edit the code.

4.Suppose that I manually type
<h1>The Heading<

then I would expect the closing </h1> to be inserted. Instead I find that I have to manually type it or choose from the large picking list that appears.

5.The IntelliSense does not remember about which might be your most common attributes that I've used. For example if use the link selector e.g. <a followed by a space character I see a large picking list but the most common attribute used would be href.

6.Then if I've typed this in so far :-

<a href=""

followed by a space character then I see another picking list and find that href appears again to choose from. I'm not sure if that would be legal code but its not very likely that href would would be chosen twice but anyway, that doesn't seem correct.

7. When typing color: for example, no list of colors is given automatically. The user has to type in the colour or select the color palette on the menu bar.

8. When clicking New HTML Page, it calls the page Untitled.html. It would be more handy for it to ask me what I would like to call it rather than having to got to Save and rename it.

9. Also when I click the Save button, the .html extension also appears but there is no need as I already chose New HTML Page. I find that I have carefully click with the mouse to avoid accidentally removing the .html extension.

I dearly love the Preview window function though so please can you advise if I am able to configure the IntelliSense better or this still being developed more?

Kind Regards
Matt

Greetings Matt,

While I can't provide detailed answers on all of your concerns, hopefully I can help address some of them in a general sense.

For some of your specifics above...

I'm not sure why you were getting problems with the "Untitled.html" file. I know if I create a "Quick File" I'll get a default file name, but when I do the "New File..." option I'm prompted to name the file before saving it, untitled is just the default they give me.

I was able to get auto "closure" of my <h1> (as well as div, p, strong) tags. I'm wondering if maybe something is just glitching.

I think inline auto completion for colors would be a nice feature, but it's a lot more complicated than you think. Who knows, it may already be in the works

In more of a general "Visual Studio vs. Coffee Cup" sense...

For a little bit of background, I'm a programmer, .Net is my primary language, so I spend a good deal of my day in Visual Studio 2012. It's a truly amazing tool.

However, I also have a copy of CoffeeCup (now on Mac, originally on PC) and I think it is a great tool. I use it for a lot of basic web sites that I develop for my friends and myself on occasion. I agree that some of the code completion isn't as deep as Visual Studio, but Coffee Cup does cover all the critical code completion you need and once you get rolling with that in Coffee Cup, you'll really start moving.

I really like the themes/projects/options that are laid out for developing my HTML sites. When you're doing more simplified HTML only projects (or light scripting) having all of the code behind aspx/cs/designer files becomes cluttered.

Coffee Cup has some better deployment tools in my opinion to getting your site out to an FTP site, S-Drive, or even to somewhere local.

Customer support is second to none here with Coffee Cup too. That alone would be the price of a license. I get feedback no later than 24 hours and the forums here keep a very vibrant and supportive community. Plus free upgrades. I've been "updating" my copy of Coffee Cup that I bought in 2000 for Windows. Pretty much anywhere else you would have been paying for a version jump by now.

So that said. I think a Coffee Cup license would be a great purchase and very valuable. I'll admit I sound a bit like a "fanboy" here, but I'm a 10+ year developer that uses Visual Studio and a few other IDEs heavily. I still find a lot of practical and day to day use out of Coffee Cup and I find it very valuable.

I hope this helps.

The program assumes that you know what you're doing for HTML and CSS as well as the rest of the languages that it is capable of editing. It's not a teaching tool, it's an editor, so I wouldn't expect it to give you a description of each attribute. I'm not sure that Dreamweaver even does that for 400 bucks.


It does insert, just not how you are used to. Your number 3 already explains that it works.


The reason that it is inserting the cursor before the closing bracket of the first part of a tag is because with HTML you are most likely going to be adding ID's and Classes to your code. This way instead of having to always back up to the place to add them it is already there for you. It's really a horse a piece on which way is more helpful as it is good either way. It definitely doesn't make it awkward to edit for most people since they are ready to put in their tags then.


You already addressed this in 2 and 3. You can also type the first letter of the tag you want to use from those picking lists and it will scroll to them for you so there are some shortcuts for that too.


I would have to concur here that it would be really nice to do this, but you can also setup your own custom Snippets for this purpose too which might help a bit.


Agreed that another href tag would not be proper and shouldn't show up there.


You shouldn't be typing "color:" at all in the HTML files, that should go in your CSS file, and unfortunately there is no color picker associated as there are on some of the more expensive programs like Dreamweaver. Would be nice, but it's really just a few extra clicks ... $70 vs. $400 makes a difference in what to expect and with all the extras just added for the preview setup it's a price well worth it.


Once again yes handier maybe, but not a major necessity. Definitely not a deal breaker for most people. One nice thing is that it doesn't automatically name it really, it's just a placeholder name until you save it. That is actually less steps for those that are trying to check out some themes or layouts from the New page list without having to mess with naming and saving


Many programs do that, once again not a deal breaker and not an unexpected behavior in most cases.

Not a lot of help there I'm sure, sorry for that, but I guess I don't see to many real issues here and I think most of it is just what you are used to in your other program so it takes a bit of getting used to this one working differently. Give it a good chance and I'm sure you'll see the value in it, especially when you start looking around for other ones to try, there aren't that many in this price range to start with, and most of those can't hold even a birthday candle to HTML Editor

Good luck in your decision making

I'm doing a lot of PHP and being able to save it with the extension of my choice is fine because I'm going to need to name it and choose the correct location.

Hi Matt,

Excuse me if this appears harsh, but who's developing the web site, you or the software?

One of the fantastic things about HTML editor is that YOU are in control. When you open a new element for example, the most convenient place to land is after the opening attribute, so this is how it is in CC HTML Editor. While this may not suit the <h1> element, in the main it is perfect.

All I can tell you is that as a designer, I have yet to find a better piece of software for writing code and, more importantly, making writing code more productive and efficient.

Your problems seem to be related to automation. If that's what you are looking for, maybe a WYSIWYG editor would suit better. But for raw code editing, there is no comparison to CC HTML Editor, period (IMHO).

All over the world, user and critic reviews alike confirm this and the huge pool of users and enthusiasts both here on CC forums and in the wider editing world are all testament to this fact.

I bet you have lots of positive things to say too, if you think about it... Go on

The software is an amazing aid to those of us who write code and the wish-list for improvements is extremely short among the regular users on here.

You can and should make some suggestions to CC by all means, but I do not see your issues as significant reasons not to be productive and creative with this fantastic editor.

Dave