This should make development a lot easier as you can now do everything from the same tab without having to open new browser tab or window.

Source Formatting

From the edit menu you can now select "Apply Source Formatting". This will go through the opened file and add line-breaks and tabs where necessary. This is useful if you are working on a file that has been minified or is in an untidy state.

Balance Braces

You can select all code between brackets by pressing ctrl+' or selecting "Balance Braces" from the edit menu. If you press it again it will find the next outter set of braces. This works for regular, square and curly brackets. This is useful for finding a closing bracket - or checking if brackets match up.

Realtime syntax error checking

When working on a PHP or JavaScript file the script is checked for syntax errors as you type. If an error is found the error message is displayed above the code editor. You can also click the line number in the error message to be taken straight to the broken line. This is an excellent tool for debugging and is a great time-saver during development.

Bracket closing

In PHP and JS files brackets are now automatically closed as you type. This is a useful time-saver and works for normal, square and curly brackets.

Tag closing

When you close an opening HTML tag the closing tag is automatically appended. This is another time-saver.

All of these features can be disabled via the preferences window if they are not your cup of tea. (Edit->Preferences)

Save Password option

When creating new sites the FTP password is now optional. If left blank. when you connect you'll be prompted to enter your password. The password is stored in your session so you will only need to enter it once and it's cleared when you logout. Using this option prevents the password from being stored in our database.

Code Snippets

Code snippets are chunks of code that you use every now and then. You can add as many snippets as you like and organise them into folders. They are then readily accessible whenever you need them.

Bespin 0.9a1 came out which was a major milestone as it now supports most of the core features that we need it to. As well as basic editing it can now be used with Find and Replace.

Find and Replace is a very important tool for any developer and has been made more intuitive. When performing a search you just have to press enter instead of clicking the Find button. It will also tell you if you've reached the end of the document.

We had a request for SFTP a while back. I'm pleased to say this is now in. In order to integrate this we had to abstract the FTP code. This should pave the way for adding new connection methods like SVN.

There is a new preferences dialog where you can set the tab size and font size. Expect more options to come.

Aside from these major updates there have been a lot of bug fixes - some of which were quite critical. If you haven't used ShiftEdit in a while, now's the time to get back in as it is a much more stable beta.

We are currently seeking testers and feedback. Also if you like ShiftEdit, please help spread the word - whether it's on a blog or social network.

A full changelog is available.

So far this only works in Firefox 3.6 and above.

This technology is built on web standards so hopefully in the not so distant future it will be supported by other browsers such as Chrome and IE.

The Bespin project by Mozilla is also providing a stand-alone editor component. It has a more robust implementation and greater resources behind it.  It is integrated into the development version of ShiftEdit. Currently the Bespin component has a few bugs and is lacking some features. Once these are resolved and Bespin is fully integrated, ShiftEdit should be ready for prime-time. Then I'll be able to eat my own dog food and end my reliance on Dreamweaver.