![]() [ Glenn Fleishman is a senior contributor to Macworld, and wrote his first code on a Commodore PET in the 1980s. But it makes the best of the space it has, along with great nuance that coders will appreciate. Without more screen territory, Textastic can’t have the scope of a desktop programming tool, and it lacks project-management features. It’s easy to swap back and forth among locally stored files, but there’s no split-view to see two or more files at once. Like most iPad software, the app fills the screen with just what you’re working on. While using Textastic, I frequently lost myself in the code and forgot the app was running on an iPad instead of a full desktop computer interface. But the program also has a unique floating cursor navigation wheel that offers arrows and selection options for more precise choices than the iOS’s magnifying glass and selection grabbers. You can use keyboard navigation and selection. ![]() The app adds keyboard commands explained in in-app and online help files. Textastic makes typing with the on-screen keyboard easier by including a row of swipable common programming punctuation, like parentheses and curly braces, above the normal on-screen keyboard. Textastic is almost certainly best used with a keyboard, whether a dock or wireless, because most people find it too tedious to tap out long stretches of code or writing. (You can avoid future prompts by choosing Always from the Overwrite Files pop-over menu, however.) Rather, you select upload, and confirm that you want to overwrite the remote copy. That’s less like “Save As” and more like “Save to Multiples Places.” There’s no per-se “Save” option (nor even one to close a file). If you copy a local file that’s linked to a remote repository to a different remote location each link is retained, which is a nice bit of recordkeeping. Crucially, a link is retained back to the same path from which the file came. Once you’ve made a connection and navigated to files or folders of interest, checking a box next to one or more items and clicking Download makes a copy in the local store. File transfer over USB from iTunes hard-to-use File Transfer feature also works. Flip to a Mac, for instance, and type in the WebDAV server URL, and you can copy, delete, or add files in Textastic’s internal storage. Tap a Wi-Fi icon (a fan with no bars) at the bottom of the Files view, and you can configure access. On top of the remote access options, Textastic also has a built-in WebDAV server, which can easily be accessed from a Mac, Windows, or other system, as well as from other iOS devices. Likewise with SFTP, an option to use a public key for authentication-stored in the local files area-lets programmers use existing workflows for that kind of secure connection. Textastic has a switch that can be thrown to disable such verification, if that’s appropriate, allowing these connections. Since Textastic supports tabs, you can have multiple files and SSH terminals open at the same time, and, on iPad, in multiple windows side by side. Many SSL-based FTP servers use self-signed certificates, which can’t be verified through a third-party authority as is universally the case for secured public Web sites. Textastic is a text editor for iPhone, iPad and Mac with rich support for syntax highlighting, FTP, SFTP and Dropbox. With clients for SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, and Google Drive, as well as the integrated SSH terminal, however, Textastic goes well beyond the functionality of a traditional text editor. The attention to detail shows here as throughout the app. Depending on the Web or cloud host or a system administrator’s particular predilections, a programmer or Web designer might face any or all of these options. (The former assumes a secured connection, while the latter has to request it.) WebDAV can be used with or without a secured HTTPS connection. It does have many features including syntax highlighting, snippet manager, tabbed editing, find and replace code, editor theme, remote and local files connections, and many more.Because this is a serious programmer’s tool, the app offers unsecured FTP along with the three separate flavors of secured FTP: SSH-based SFTP, and both implicit and explicit FTP over SSL. See also: Top 10 Apps like Textastic Code Editor. Koder is a code editor for iPad and iPhone. Discover the Top 10 Apps like PLIST Editor in 2021 for iPhone & iPad.
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