Bare Bones Software, Inc.

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BBEdit Comparison Chart

What's the difference between BBEdit and TextWrangler? See for yourself! Highlighted rows indicate features which are exclusive to BBEdit.

Note: This chart used to include features from BBEdit Lite 6.1. However, BBEdit Lite has been discontinued for a long time: if you’re still using it, you really should upgrade to TextWrangler. Like BBEdit Lite, TextWrangler doesn’t cost anything, and in all respects it’s a much more modern and capable application.

This chart is not an exhaustive listing of the features in BBEdit. You’ll find an overview in the BBEdit Feature Tour.

TextWrangler 2.3 BBEdit 8.7
Universal Binary (PowerPC and Intel Macs) • •
Multiple Undo • •
Multiple Clipboards • •
Splittable editing windows • •
Extensively configurable key equivalents • •
Show and hide individual menu items or entire menus • •
Transparently reads and writes DOS, Unix, and Mac files • •
Transparently reads and writes gzip (.gz) files • •
Powerful multi-file search and replace (even on files that aren’t open) with multiple simultaneous search and replace operations • •
Automatic backup of files when saving (optional) • •
Periodic auto-save to protect against data loss from system crashes, power failures, and locust infestations   •
Complete set of HTML Tools for fast, easy, and correct markup. Supports current standards including HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, and XHTML 1.1.
  • HTML Tools accessible from menu or floating palette
  • Keyboard-driven context-sensitive tag editing commands (Tag Maker and Edit Tag)
  • Apply HTML markup from contextual (right-click) menus, or use Clippings for tag completion
  • Standards-based document and site syntax checking—check single pages or entire sites for compliance
  • Preview in BBEdit—automatically updates a preview as you edit, or preview in any installed browser
  • Built-in web-server support allows you to preview dynamically generated HTML
  • Close Current Tag command speeds and simplifies HTML element creation and editing
  • Powerful include and placeholder options for easier site maintenance
  • Built-in Tidy support for code cleanup and accessibility checking
  • Configure multiple web site projects via the scriptable HTML Web Site preferences
  • Easily create file and image links with drag and drop
  • Web-safe color palette includes Visibone® arrangements optimized for usability
  • Comprehensive HTML Entities palette for easy insertion of Latin-1, Symbol, Greek Letters, and other special characters
  • Integration with Macromedia Dreamweaver™
   •
Flexible 'grep' style pattern-based search and replace based on PCRE (the Perl-Compatible Regular Expression library) • •
Advanced PCRE 5.0 support, including named subpatterns and other grep goodness • •
Comprehensive AppleScript support: scriptable, recordable, and attachable • •
Built-in file and folder comparison with Find Differences • •
Find Differences displays word- and character-level differences • •
Rectangular/columnar text selections • •
Open, edit, and save files in a wide variety of character sets (including UTF-8 and UTF-16) • •
Automatic source-code language guessing • •
Can be used as an external editor for Xcode • •
Unix command-line access for opening and comparing files • •
Authenticated saves • •
Emacs key-binding support • •
Extensive FTP and SFTP support
  • Open and save text files located on remote FTP/SFTP servers
  • Supports Mac OS X Keychain and use of alternate ports
  • FTP/SFTP Browser provides persistent view of remote site directories
  • Bonjour (Rendezvous) discovery of local servers
 • •
Integrated support for file transfers through Interarchy, Transmit, Fetch, and other third-party clients with “Edit in BBEdit” commands • •
Integration with Super Get Info • •
Open files and view directory listings with Disk Browser • •
Disk Browser features hierarchical folder listing and file filters for advanced control   •
Function-navigation and syntax-coloring support for more than 20 programming languages, including HTML, JavaScript, Java, Perl, C++, Objective-C, & more • •
Function-navigation and syntax-coloring support for Ruby, object-oriented JavaScript, YAML, and SQL • •
Control editor behavior and display settings on a per-language basis • •
Code folding   •
Powerful Clippings system:
  • Store and insert frequently used text items and custom tags
  • Menu-driven and key-bindable item selection
  • Language-sensitive switching of clipping sets
  • Useful example sets included
  • Download additional sets from our web site for free; plus, ponies
  • OK, maybe not ponies—sorry I got your hopes up
   •
Run Unix scripts and filters (including Perl, Python, Ruby, and shell script) from a built-in menu • •
Direct integration with Late Night Software’s Affrus Perl IDE   •
Native Mac OS X spelling checker • •
Check spelling as you type to catch embarrassing typos • •
Integrated support for CVS, Subversion, and Perforce version control systems; work with source files from multiple repositories   •
Shell worksheets run Unix commands from an editable window (just like MPW worksheets, for you old-timers)   •
Use BBEdit's legendary text processing power in any Automator workflow   •
Create and run Text Factories—apply any number of powerful text transformations to multiple files without programming   •
Open multiple documents per window:
  • Documents Drawer presents a list of all of the documents that are open in that window
  • Navigation Bar contains a popup menu with a list of all of the documents open in the window
  • Previous Document and Next Document commands speed navigation using keyboard, menu, or mouse
 • •
Create PCRE 5.0-based Codeless Language Modules to add syntax coloring and function navigation for additional languages without writing any code • •
Support for Exuberant Ctags (a powerful tool for indexing and navigating source code), providing easy access to indexed symbols by means of contextual (right-click) menus and the Find Definition command   •
Use File Groups to organize your projects, grouping files into a single browser without regard to their location   •
Comprehensive PDF user manual provided • •
Reduced-cost upgrade path to new major versions of BBEdit, with generous free-upgrade window   •
Price Free US$125