My habit of web development is writing the code on  my local LAMP server, test it, and then upload that code to the client`s host server. Unfortunately, the client came out to be a web developer too, so he wanted to play with the code that i wrote. I didn’t really know what to do now, it would be too awkward to write every single script then upload it, modify it two or three lines, then re-upload it again.Then an idea popped in my mind: “How can i write code, on another server, without having to re-upload again?”, so i looked for a ftp IDE that whenever i click save, it uploads the new version of the code. It is now great to be able to create, update and delete scripts from your server without having to go through the ftp upload process.

So i decided to look out for an online IDE. I stumbled upon CodeAnywhere and ShiftEdit online editors so i decided to give them each a try. These are my reviews, so it’s up to you to decide which is the best.But my award first goes to:

ShiftEdit

I fell in love with this one. Fast braces, brackets and parentheses completion, no connection drops, can edit file permissions right away (not that CodeAnywhere can’t do that but i found this one first). I just entered my client’s ftp username, password and domain, then voila! I was in ready to write thousands of lines of code just from my browser. It comes with a powerful syntax error detector (much more powerful than say, NetBeans or Eclipse) and thanks to it, i’ve done what i would  manage to do in 2 days in only 10 hours.

ShiftEdit Pros:

• Very fast code completion and uploading
• Able to edit permissions
• Can edit almost all web languages (Ruby,HTML,PHP,JavaScript etc)
• Tabular file editing

ShiftEdit Cons:

• Not available all the time (You may get a message saying that the server is IDLE from time to time)
• Might have problems while creating files (not sure why is that)
• Does not permit more than 1 server connection for Free accounts

Except the fact that sometimes it can be unavailable to users,  and might have problems creating files (For example two days ago: it didn’t let me create a  folder until three trials after) it’s a great editor code-wise, and i encourage all you readers to give it a try, i am sure you” fall in love with it!

CodeAnywhere

CodeAnywhere is an online IDE supporting FTP and SFTP connections, code completion, tag completion, simple database operations (MySQL)  and multiple connections. The problem is that in the free version you only have the right to use 64,9 kb of bandwidth for Free accounts. It’s all good if you have paid for your account, except for this limitation, it is a great online IDE.So let’s summarize for the impatient:

Pros:

• Good code completion
• Able to do database operations
• Social Plugins
• A nice, dark theme that you”ll love to code on

Cons:

• There’s a bandwidth limitation for Free users
• Not the best code writing speed (you’ll notice a very small delay when typing code and having it appear)

So these are our online IDE’s for this month. Stay tuned for more reviews!