Best CF text editor?

[ACS LLC]

Does anybody have any recommendations for a CF text editor that works well with CF2016?

The ones I've looked at appear to be either no longer supported or very old and only supporting up to CF11

CFEclipse - No longer being developed since Dec 29th 2022, so reasonably new (possibly still the best option)

CFBrackets - Looks like it's only good up to CF11 (Might still be okay for 2016)

Coldfusion pad - Nothing on the web site just an EXE, so a little worrying

CFBuilder - Adobe - Paid, but says 2018 release, so good for CF2016, but no longer supported? If I have to pay I'd like something that continues to be supported

Sublime with CF plug in -  Looking at Github the plug in is very old and no longer supported.

I found most of the link on here

https://www.quackit.com/coldfusion/tutorial/coldfusion_editors.cfm

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

[Charlie Arehart]

ACS, yes, more thoughts. First, CFBuilder is now free, as a VS Code plugin.

You don't mention VS Code (aka vscode, or MS Visual Studio Code, which is also free--and not to be confused with much older Visual Studio). I can't tell if perhaps you're unaware of it or somehow don't care for it. FWIW, it's become to many THE de facto code editor/IDE for much of IT seems, as it's extensible with support for most languages.

Indeed, there were multiple cfml extensions for cfml long before Adobe came out with theirs in CFBuilder (a year ago next month), and to be clear some people still very much favor those others. (None bring the true IDE features CFBuilder can, but many don't know or care about those, or struggle to enable/use them. Conversely, they may find something the other extensions do or do better than CFBuilder. I'm sure it will improve over time, as will resources to help in using it. ) 

Finally, separate from vscode and beyond what you've listed there are still other editors with cfml support (which may be dated, but better than nothing).

And besides that listing you pointed to, I have my own. It's within my cf411 resource, specifically at https://www.cf411.com/cf editors. Sadly, and though I've been updating that list nearly weekly for 20 years (with 2000 tools and resources of interest to cfml folks), it just doesn't seem to rise to being something others find or mention. Still, I plug on.

Hope all that helps you, and others who may find this thread. 

[ACS LLC]

Thanks Charlie, that's a big help. I found VS Code https://code.visualstudio.com/ I'll check it now.

It's got to be an improvement over Notepad, although I've managed fine since CF 3.1 😉 , but I do think it's time to start using something that helps me out a little .

[Charlie Arehart]

Yep, and I'd offered that link in my post, to be clear. BTW, some find notepad++ alone to be a big step up from notepad, if vscode may seem not to suit you. 

[ACS LLC]

Yes, I've had Notepad++ installed since this time but never used it, it's worth using just for the dark night mode and the lines numbers for the code so I can debug big pages, but I thought if I'm going to move to something else, I may as well look at something with more of a CF focus 

[Charlie Arehart]

Ok, but you'd not mentioned even being aware of it, so we couldn't know you knew all that. 🙂 And there IS a cfml extension for it, but it's dated and cumbersome to setup, and I'd mentioned those in my list, for others interested to consider it still.

It's indeed my go-to editor, for cfml and all other editing. I'm not a day-to-day coder, so find it loads faster for one-off file edits, faster even than vscode. But cf folks should give cfb on vscode serious consideration, as it's free and very capable. 

[ACS LLC]

I did not know that, I did a quick Google and it did look messy to install and possibly a little too out of date, I might avoid that 🙂

[Charlie Arehart]

Understood.