HomeSite is not dying

A few moments ago, I came across the blog of a fellow Web developer, in which he said he had questioned a client’s tool of choice—HomeSite.

I spent good money on a bells-and-whistles up-to-date Dreamweaver, but I keep wondering when it will be useful. Please, somebody tell me! I use HomeSite—or HomeSite+, which has been around for three or four years, and may be the end of the line—for all my Web development. In fact, I am writing these words in HomeSite right now, before uploading them to my server.

It turned out that my fellow developer got on well with HomeSite: he says, “HomeSite is a superior product for hard coding web sites .” And then he says, “it is best to work with developing technologies rather than dying ones. I would have to say that that rules out HomeSite.”

HomeSite is not dying. It is supported by thousands, maybe millions, of Web developers. One feature in particular is important.

The specs for defining colour coding are public, and so are the specs for snippets. That means that you can quickly find and download a colour scheme and/or a set of snippets for every language that makes developers cry “Hallelujah!”

PHP 5 wasn’t around when HomeSite settled into quiescence, like a hen on its brood. But you can find PHP 5 schemes. And here’s one for Ruby on Rails.

Dying? ¡Que va!