Comments on: How to Edit Text Documents on the Web

By: RottNKorpse

RottNKorpse — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:47:53 +0000

after even more testing I have come to the conclusion that this is an AWFUL product and doesn’t deserve even a 3. The ecoder on their site is useless due to privacy issues but the download to install on your own server is so flawed that it is unusable…they don’t even explain how to $&#&@! install it!

Here is the text you get when you go to the installation file. “ecoder installation guide – sorry, as this project is not yet finished, there is no documentation. ”

I can never take anything seriously that provides an “installation” guide that DOESN’T GUIDE YOU ON INSTALLING!

This now gets a 2/10 purely for effort and potential….execution and documentation gets a -30.

By: RottNKorpse

RottNKorpse — Sun, 03 May 2009 22:06:32 +0000

After further testing of this product this is both not useful and then useful.

This is more of a social text editor because every file uploaded is editable by anyone so in some instances it is useful but for the most part I don’t want people seeing my code so it isn’t that useful. I also code on the web via FTP which allows me to edit stuff and save to a server so I don’t have to download, edit, save, upload, download, edit, save, upload, etc. This doesn’t have ftp ability. The part where it is good is that it lets you download it and run it on your own server so it could be private and only editable by people you allow to know the URL. However still wouldn’t allow you to navigate your server and edit files…it only lets you upload and edit files in a certain folder of your server.

I mentioned Bespin earlier but it also has the issue of ftp missing but it does provide a more private editor experience however also allowing others to edit your files IF you give them the permission to do so where as ecoder, anyone and everyone can edit anything.

Also I don’t like how the tabs work in ecoder…You can only have a max of 10 files open at a time and it doesn’t support auto-replacing of text between tabs as an installed editor would, it only supports it one tab at a time.

Overall I wish this was viable to use in my situation but it is missing vital features and the privacy issues is huge problem. Although the privacy issue could be solved by hosting it yourself. 6/10 – It certainly has potential though. If I could install it on a server and it navigate the entire sever and also support replacing between tabs I would switch to this as it would make working on a server even easier.

By: RottNKorpse

RottNKorpse — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:37:36 +0000

Manu J Naik, no Google Docs is not what this is about. Google Docs is basically a webbased version of Microsoft Word. This is a text editor for editing code and other programming as well as text documents. Google Docs doesn’t support syntax highlighting like editors do as it is not made for that. The closest installed application like these is notepad++.

By: Manu J Naik

Manu J Naik — Sun, 03 May 2009 11:40:45 +0000

This is pretty much like Google Docs right?

By: RottNKorpse

RottNKorpse — Sun, 03 May 2009 09:10:17 +0000

I’m surprised you didn’t mention Notepad++ in the catalog of editor applications :) but I thought I’d comment on another Web-based Editor called Bespin. It is made by Mozilla and has a lot of interesting ideas as far as features expanding what a text editor can do. Currently it requires registration to use but it is of course free to register.

I haven’t tried ecoder but thought I’d mention Bespin and see what you and the rest of your viewers thought.