Visual SlickEdit 9

asp:review

VisualSlickEdit 9

NewFeatures Go Beyond Code Editing

By Mike Riley

Regular asp.netNOWreaders may recall the praise I effused in myreview of Visual SlickEdit 8.0. A new version has been released and haseclipsed the old by heaping on a load of new features while still keeping theenvironment remarkably agile and the start-up execution speed nearly as fast.Of most interest to .NET enthusiasts is the product's full support for CLRautomatic code-completion of library functions and parameters. Additionally,VS.NET solutions can be debugged within the Visual SlickEdit environment,giving all the rich functionality without the boxed-in feel of most IDEs.

Figure 1: Visual SlickEdit 9 now supportscode completion with library function and parameter look-ups for .NETlanguages, such as C# and VB.NET.

Beyondthe .NET language improvements, Visual SlickEdit 9 also features the uniqueability to refactor C++ code. Refactoring is normally associated with Java (andto a lesser extent, .NET) code, but there are still a considerable number ofdevelopers using C++, especially in the embedded arenas. Bringing thisfunctionality to that programming segment is a long overdue capability thatwill make C++ developer's lives easier. Also of note in this new release isSlickEdit's first foray into the world of GUI development with a relativelysimplistic Java-based Java GUI Builder. Although SlickEdit's GUI builder islight years behind sophisticated GUI palettes like those found in Borland'sJBuilder product, it nevertheless is good enough for simple GUI-basedapplications.

Unfortunately,SlickEdit missed a major market advantage by not including a .NET GUI builderfor the Windows environment. SlickEdit proponents might argue that the .NET GUIelements apply to only one of the OS platforms on which SlickEdit runs, but Iwould counter that that is not the case. Project Mono (http://www.go-mono.org/), theLinux-interpreted version of .NET, has just released its initial interpretationof Windows form assemblies, effectively bringing .NET GUI-based applications tothe Linux environment. Perhaps a future version of Visual SlickEdit will expandthe new GUI building feature beyond Java and support any GUI-capable languagesuch as .NET, GTK+ (The GIMP Toolkit) for Gnome-based apps, or even Tkinter forPython-based GUIs.

Figure 2: The rudimentary GUI-builder isJava-based for Java-only GUI apps; perhaps future versions of Visual SlickEditwill support .NET Windows GUI apps, as well.

.NET CodeImprovements

The mostimportant additions for .NET developers are the aforementioned CLRcode-complete and debugging support. However, this could have used someadditional attention as many of the build, debug, and execute settings need tobe modified to support new C# or VB.NET projects outside the Visual Studio.NETsolution files. As I eluded to earlier regarding the opportunity to create a .NETGUI builder, SlickEdit could have had a coup with native .NET Framework SDKsupport out of the box, circumventing any dependency on access to a VS.NET IDE.Instead, this version still defaults to playing a slave to .sln files for fulldebugging support. In other words, Visual SlickEdit 9's CLR debugger only workswith previously prepared Visual Studio.NET projects/solution files, not on newstandalone .NET language files created within the Visual SlickEdit environmentthat are not associated with a Visual Studio.NET project.

However,SlickEdit's support staff did help me manually configure the environment tobuild and execute .NET language applications (information that I will passalong to the reader). Configuration settings will need to be altered from thedefault in order to compile .NET Framework-based applications. For C#developers, these settings should be:

Also,you must set the PATH to the C# compiler of choice (for example,C:WINDOWSMicrosoft.NETFrameworkv1.1.4322). Finally, make sure that your C#files have the .cs extension; otherwise, the build syntax will not tag the filefor compilation. SlickEdit plans to have these settings pre-configured in afuture release of the product. In addition to the C# support, Visual SlickEditnow also fully supports statement-level tagging for VB.NET and improvedVBScript tagging recognition, as well.

Other NewFeatures

Besidesthe enhanced cross-platform, cross-language neutrality of the editingenvironment, Visual SlickEdit now supports dual monitors for that Matrix-likesurrounded-by-code feeling, background searches to keep your mind on coding(and not spidering), macro command enhancements, a product update manager, anda few other tweaks that continue to polish an already shiny product. AFlash-based tutorial is available on the CD, although this is identical to theproduct advertisement/tutorial on the company's Web site.

Figure3: The good andthe bad.

Conclusion

VisualSlickEdit continues to be my basic code editor of choice, although I had higherexpectations for the .NET support in this new release. Although the C++refactoring and Java GUI Builder tools are worthy additions, these featureswill be rarely leveraged by .NET converts. Regardless, for those developers wholive in the real world of multiple code syntax environments and are believersof using the best tool for the job regardless of platform loyalty, VisualSlickEdit is still one of the best programmer toolboxes available.

Rating:

Web Site: http://www.slickedit.com

Price: US$299; upgrade from version 7 or higher, US$99