It’s rare that something related to web development gets me really excited anymore. Most Flash stuff doesn’t thrill me. Most Web 2.0 stuff strikes me as Web 1.0 rehashed. But this – this rattles my chain.
Bare Bones Software has just released what might be the most amazing upgrade to their flagship product BBEdit to date. BBEdit 8.5 offers a whopping 160+ improvements over 8.0, but the reason why this baby is such a must-have is one killer feature: code folding.
Code folding is something I’ve wished BBEdit would do for years. The premise is so simple it’s mindblowing: HTML is a language structured around tags opening and closing. You open a DIV tag, you close a DIV tag, you open a TD tag, you close a TD tag. So what if you could hide everything between the opening and closing tag? If you know everything inside a particular tag is kosher, why not conceal it so you can focus on the stuff that might be giving you trouble elsewhere? That’s exactly what code folding does, and it’s amazing. This is the single biggest improvement to my web development workflow since Adobe added image slicing to PhotoShop/ImageReady. It’s that huge.
Okay, well, it may only be that huge to megadorks like me who insist on hand-coding everything, but still… Excellent!
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
