Bluefish, a lightweight, versatile, open language editor
December 15, 2018
Bluefish, a lightweight, versatile, open language editor
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with BlueFish
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.
- 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.