Today I really needed to find and replace in many files at once, and found this great feature to exists in Quanta. I have actually not seen it before. The menuitem says “Edit“->”Find in files” so one might think it doesn’t replace. But it does :) It’s a part of KWebDev that is named KFileReplace, and is also included in Quanta. A function that saved my day.

KFileReplace in Quanta

I got some ideas from LinkedPHPers, a group on LinkedIn. There is a discussion going on, “What is the best free application that runs in Ubuntu 9.10 – the Karmic Koala for development of websites in PHP?” My own anser was Quanta Plus or Eclipse PDT for projects and gEdit for lighter/faster edits. But a lot of people mentioned Netbeans. So I’m giving Netbeans a try on my Ubuntu and my OS X machine.

A brief try today I like it, but I think the use of snippets/templates/palettes/macros (different names in different editors for the recycling of code) should be made easier. I like the way Quanta handles them, drag and drop to create but the option for more advanced edit. And stored in a common format like .txt. The whole idea with snippets is to speed up your coding, at least to me. But I still need to check further in Netbeans, as I said I only had a brief look today. So this is NOT a review … yet ;)

By the way you might have noticed I got some new pages up, “Free editors for OS X” and “Free texteditors for Linux”. I intend to continue with Windows editors soon, and the review them all.

The image you see below is the editor Quanta Plus on Mac OS X. It is a port of KDE WebDev and is usually run on Linux. Since I’ve been working with it for a while I tought it would be nice to get it going on Apples Mac OS X too.

Macports
I began by installing MacPorts (an “an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system”).

Before you install MacPorts be sure to have Apples X11 User/window environment (installed as default in OS X 10.5+) ans XCode Developer Tools.

The next step was to install the base for the K Desktop Environment (KDE3). This is done by opening the Terminal and write:

sudo port install kdebase3

The instal might take a while. Now for the programs. Install kdewebdev3, a webdeveloping package including Quanta Plus.

sudo port install kdewebdev3

Once again, the install can take some time so be patient. When it’s done you can find the apps in /opt/local/bin. Good to go!

The latest months I’ve been working as an employee with Quanta on Xubuntu, and I love the way snippets is handled in Quanta Plus. They are stored as simple .txt-files, which are created when you drag selected code into the sidebar. The snippets are called “Templates”, which might be a little confusing. They also have a scope – Global, Local or Project. I mainly use Global, so I have all in the same place and can reach them. I then share the with Dropbox, making the snippets available in my OS X and Windows too.