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BlueFish Editor

BlueFish Editor

Overview

What is BlueFish Editor?

BlueFish is a free and open source text editor supporting a wide range of languages, multiple document interface, powerful search tools, in-line checking and auto-recovery, and other features.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Bluefish is a versatile text editor that has gained popularity for its ability to quickly solve project errors and deliver projects on …
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Product Details

What is BlueFish Editor?

BlueFish Editor Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(2)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Bluefish is a versatile text editor that has gained popularity for its ability to quickly solve project errors and deliver projects on time. According to users, the software is particularly useful for making quick fixes in HTML, CSS, and configuration files. Its lightweight nature allows it to support large files without any issues, making it a preferred choice for web design and theme editing. In addition, Bluefish is widely used for creating and maintaining websites and web-based systems. Users appreciate its advanced tools for editing texts and enhancing project appearance, which contributes to improving efficiency and time management in a professional business environment.

Another key use case of Bluefish is its role as a text-editing tool for website development. Users rely on the software's capabilities to visualize HTML code and make quick edits, making it easier to design and update websites without hiring external help. The software also supports various programming languages and features automatic tag-closing, making it suitable for programming and developing dynamic websites. Moreover, Bluefish is highly appreciated for its HTML5 support and ease of use, providing a cost-effective solution for those in need of a basic text editor.

Bluefish has proven to be beneficial not only for individuals but also for teams working on collaborative projects. Multiple coders can work together using Bluefish, improving coding speed and accuracy. Its user-friendly interface allows for easy maintenance of websites for both Windows and Linux users.

Overall, Bluefish's stability, functionality, and resource efficiency have made it a reliable choice across organizations. It helps improve organization skills, operational processes, and brand promise while saving users a significant amount of time in studying and writing code. Whether it's correcting errors, making quick fixes in code, or designing websites from scratch, Bluefish provides the necessary tools for efficient web development.

Lightweight and Space-saving: Many users have praised Bluefish for being lightweight and consuming very little space on the hard disk. This is an important advantage, as it allows users to install and run the software smoothly without taking up too much storage space.

User-friendly Interface: The software's user-friendly interface has been widely appreciated by reviewers. It can be easily used by non-technical individuals without prior technical knowledge, making it accessible to a wide range of users. Its simplicity and intuitiveness contribute to a positive user experience.

Wide Range of Coding Language Support: Bluefish provides extensive support for various coding languages including Python, Java, HTML, C, and C++. Users find this feature impressive as it allows them to work with multiple languages within the same environment. This versatility enhances productivity and convenience for developers working on different projects.

Outdated Visual Interface: Several users have expressed disappointment with Bluefish's outdated visual interface. They feel that the software could benefit from more development and an updated graphical interface to match modern design programs and platforms.

Difficult to Use and Navigate: Some users have found Bluefish's interface clunky and hard to navigate, making it difficult for them to use the software effectively. They also mention experiencing crashes on their Macbook while using Bluefish, adding to their frustration.

Lack of Updates and Development: Many reviewers have mentioned the lack of frequent updates for Bluefish as a major concern. They express disappointment with the latest update being from 2017 and suggest that more development is needed to keep up with evolving design standards.

Users have made several recommendations for Bluefish, an editor for programming projects. The three most common recommendations are as follows:

  1. Use Bluefish for simple tasks and code representation. Users recommend using Bluefish as an editor for simple tasks and for quickly checking code representation on the web. It is seen as a powerful and easy-to-use language editor.

  2. Categorize text tools for easier navigation. Users suggest categorizing the text tools in Bluefish to improve navigation and make it easier to find specific features.

  3. Recommended for students and developers. Many users recommend Bluefish for students and developers, emphasizing its usefulness for projects and gaining knowledge. However, some suggest having someone with coding knowledge when using Bluefish for programming purposes.

Overall, users recommend giving Bluefish a try, acknowledging a slight learning curve but considering it a low-risk investment. While there are occasional crashes reported, users still see great potential in Bluefish for website development, particularly if community support increases for necessary extensions and features.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-2 of 2)
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Jason Smith, DPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BlueFish as a general-purpose text and HTML editor. It is being used all over the organization where there are those who prefer a simple GUI based text editor that will work on almost every platform. BlueFish solves one huge problem for us, that being that BlueFish is easily found and simply installed, and is governed by the GNU GPL license.
  • Easily found and downloaded. If I need someone to go to the web and grab it I can tell them the URL. It is easily installed and one can be edited in minutes.
  • BlueFish is easy to use. It can have a non-technical user use it to edit config files or text documents and not have them frustrated. It has a friendly straight forward user interface.
  • BlueFish does a really good job editing HTML documents specifically. Probably one of the best HTML editors left out there.
  • Not that it matters to me, but the user interface does look a bit dated. However, if you can get over that and realize that this thing can run, on every relevant platform available, and function consistently across them all, it is no big deal.
  • BlueFish needs an easy way to open a file via SSH from within BlueFish. Some kind of "open remote file" function. Other editors have this function.
  • It would be cool if there were some Bootstrap 4.0 stuff added to the editor.
BlueFish is a good basic HTML and text editor that is easy for all to use. If I need someone to grab a friendly editor, then BlueFish is the way to go. If you need an editor to fix a bunch of pages then this editor has a lot of functions that are not found it other editors. Stuff like HTML Tidy or functions that strip extra lines out.
  • How can you go wrong with a GNU GPL product that works? That's a really low-risk proposition.
  • It is only returns. It is like 0% investment to 5,000% return.
  • The only negative you will have with this product are those Cretans that despise OSS and the willfully ignorant.
BBEdit is fantastic but it costs money. Frankly, BBEdit is not worth paying for. All you are doing is paying old software and I have a problem asking people to do that. Also, BBEdit is limited to the small Mac Universe. Likewise, Notepadd++ is only found on Windows but I much better than BBEdit. Finally, there is Atom. I like Atom a bunch because it has a lot more functionality than BlueFish. Atom is a better code editor than BlueFish. Also, the Atom interface is a bit confusing to the new user.
As with most GNU GPL products support is top-notch. Documentation is fantastic, all functions are documented. Also, this product has been around for more than a decade so there is lots of stuff on how to do this or that with this tool. The only thing holding you back from support is your own drive to find a solution. RTFM, my friend.
Jerry Janes | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use it on Linux, on which it is stable, functional and uses little resources. It is highly intuitive; you need to know nothing to get right to work. It starts up just as fast as a text editor and allows multiple tabs without crashing. I appreciate common GUI features such as search/replace. undo/redo, and spellcheck, and common toolbars, for example. Working far beyond markup languages such as HTML and CSS, it is an ideal editor for PHP and JavaScript, not to mention others including ASP .NET and VBS, C/C++, Cold Fusion, Java and JSP, jQuery, Perl, Python, Ruby, SQL, and XML. Another great feature is its automatic tag-closing.
  • Lightweight
  • Common GUI
  • Works with multiple markup and programming languages
  • As user-friendly as it gets
  • Stable
  • There are WYSIWYG Open alternatives, some of which work perfectly as an Open version of Dreamweaver, but the only suggestion I would have is that Bluefish add a WYSIWYG tab, e.g. code/visual.
It is perfectly suited for most markup and programming languages, much better than Text docs, but it is not ideal for anyone who'd like a visual editor.
  • Like any Open solution, the ROI is relative to what you need to do to develop at the same level as a proprietary solution. BlueFish has zero learning curve and is compatible with a myriad of languages, so you can be productive as need be with no investment whatsoever. I'd call that significant ROI.
  • Notepad++
Compare it to what I'd call its WYSIWYG editor, BlueGriffon. Again, the two are fundamentally different solutions. Use them together. Don't waste your money on Adobe or any other proprietary alternative.
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