Is text a large part of your life? Do you write blog posts, code Web pages, search in log files, generate database reports, and regularly look for needles in textual haystacks? The best tool on the Mac for those tasks is BBEdit, from Bare Bones Software. But BBEdit is a deep program, and many people—even long-time users—are often unaware of or aren’t taking full advantage of BBEdit’s productivity enhancing features, such as grep searching, clippings, text completion, projects, context-aware HTML markup tools, FTP/SFTP browsers, version control software integration, template-driven HTML previews, and more.
Take Control of BBEdit, which was created in collaboration with Bare Bones Software, explains how to use BBEdit 10 to accomplish real-world tasks more efficiently than ever before. The book focuses on three main areas of usage: essential text-processing features for all BBEdit users, working with HTML from the level of the individual tag all the way to a dynamic Web site, and managing multi-resource projects.
BBEdit 11? Please note that this ebook is about BBEdit 10, which works with 10.6.8 Mountain Lion and later. See the Blog tab (below) to learn whether a BBEdit 11 title might become available. BBEdit 11 is compatible with 10.8.5 Mavericks and later.
Read this 199-page ebook to learn how to:
Set up BBEdit for maximum efficiency:
- Configure key standard and expert preferences for optimal usage.
- Sync BBEdit settings and support files between Macs using Dropbox.
- Create text factories that automate sequences of text processing commands.
- Create clippings of boilerplate text, complete with dynamic placeholders.
- Use Dropbox or a version control system to track versions of documents.
If you use BBEdit at all, then buy Take Control of BBEdit, either for a head start or a tune-up… the information it contains is immensely practical and useful.
—Miraz Jordan, in MacTips
Start work on the right track:
- Collect multiple resources—including files, folders, and URLs—into a single project window.
- Use BBEdit’s many options for opening and saving files.
- Work with remote files via BBEdit’s FTP/SFTP browser windows.
Type faster, search better, and automate repetitive bits:
- Control BBEdit with keyboard shortcuts.
- Write faster with text completion of words, code snippets, HTML tags, and more.
- Clean up text with spurious tabs, incorrect case, gremlin characters, and more.
- Search for and replace text across multiple documents at once.
- Learn how to use grep pattern matching for powerful searches.
- Write in Markdown, and preview Markdown documents.
Compare and collaborate effectively:
- Discover best practices for commenting and revision tracking.
- Compare multiple versions of documents.
Run your Web site like a wizard:
- Create HTML and CSS files using BBEdit’s effective, extensive markup tools.
- Preview dynamic pages locally with user-defined preview templates.
- Clean up old or badly coded Web pages.
- Build Web sites using templates and includes.
- Connect BBEdit to Fetch, Interarchy, or Transmit to edit remote files.
- Maintain Web sites in BBEdit using four different workflows.
About Glenn Fleishman
Glenn Fleishman is a veteran technology writer who has contributed to dozens of publications across his career, including Macworld, Fast Company, and Increment. He has also written dozens of editions of books in the Take Control series. He spent 2019 and 2020 building 100 tiny type museums full of real printing artifacts. Glenn lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.
