AptEdit Pro is not the Swiss Army Knife of editors. It's more like a pocket knife--fewer tools, perhaps, but when all you want is a knife, the other tools are just distractions. For HTML and many coding projects, AptEdit Pro is just what you need.
AptEdit is not likely to replace the editor in your favorite IDE, but if you're editing a lot of code that doesn't often have an IDE--PERL files, for example, or HTML, or binary data--it can be extremely useful. It's also very small, designed to run from a USB drive--take your editor with you! This makes it an excellent choice for troubleshooters and network admins who may need to work on multiple desktops configured with who-knows-what over the course of the day.
All of the basics are there--syntax highlighting, tabbed (or MDI) display, a diff function, and so on. I found the hex display (used when opening binary files) to be intuitive and useful. The HTML viewer does not need to laboriously launch your browser to show you a render of your markup--a nice touch (and one which adds to the lightweight nature of the program). Code folding (the ability to collapse or expand blocks of code, such as 'if/else' blocks or entire subroutines) is also present.
AptEdit is very much a programmer's tool, especially for those programmers who regularly work with a variety of text files in several environments, as opposed to those with a dedicated development environment specialized for their language of choice. It's a bit beyond "whim" purchase, but the 30-day trial should be more than enough to let coders determine if it's the tool for them.
--Ian Harac
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