Review from 6.6 (September/October 2008)

An email about SEEdit Maxi came across one of the REALbasic mailing lists a few months ago, announcing a new update. There are other XHTML editors, but SEEdit's promise of helpful code insertion and other features seemed intriguing. I downloaded it from http://seeditmaxi.cachefly.net and checked it out. I'm glad I did. SEEdit Maxi has a lot to offer anyone who's a web designer.

SEEdit Maxi looks at first glance to be an XHTML editor, but in reality it's much more. The interface is packed with features and has a very dense set of tools and options. You can tell, however, that a great deal of thought has been spent in designing buttons, tools, and palettes. As a result, the interface seems much simpler than it really is. Interface elements aren't always standard (for instance, in the Preferences window), but are always cleanly and consistently designed.

The first time you open the program, it prompts you to save an example set of files to the desktop, a nice touch. The automatic update checking was also good to see, since it's become such an expected feature in applications. Once you check your settings (I selected my favorite web browser in SEEdit's preferences), you can jump right into coding.

The power of SEEdit Maxi is evident immediately. It's a complete site editor, and when you create a new site SEEdit Maxi's wizard leads you through the steps to create your initial page setup. Once that's done, you can code your pages with a host of snippets and templates to speed development. I appreciated the quick insert CSS tool, but also the type ahead palette. It's like having an on screen reference that dumps code into your site pages on command, somewhat like the REALbasic IDE's autocomplete feature. SEEdit MAxi made it easy to work with pictures and other web content, but also made it easy to write CSS and handle include files. The RSS page generation was especially helpful. Even better was the color-coded syntax and the built-in syntax checking. If you need help with any of SEEdit Maxi's features, its website (http://seeditmaxi.cachefly.net/) contains examples, keyboard shortcuts, movies, a support forum, and even screenshots of efficient ways to arrange the application's various windows.

After you've developed your site, SEEdit Maxi provides full FTP features including a "CleanUp to FTP" feature to ready the site for uploading.

In the end, SEEdit is not so much an XHTML editor as it is an IDE for website development. It holds its own against other applications in its field, including Coda. With Coda currently at $79.00 and SEEdit licensed as freeware, you owe it to yourself to check out this tool.

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SEEdit Maxi