Love Love Love this app!

This text editor allows me to do my homework (yay!). My HTML5/CSS3 teacher requires us to use Notepad or Notepad++ and of course Mac doesn’t have that. Our textbook has bad things to say about Mac’s TextEdit app and after saving my homework file and not being able to go back in to edit it the next day, I can see why. I have not had a single issue with Textastic. It does everything I hear a text editor is supposed to do. I especially like how it connects to iCloud and connects with my iPhone. At any time, I could close my laptop, pick up my phone, and there’s my markup. Just like Pages! I also like that the phone app lets you preview what your markup would look like rendered in a browser. As a student new to HTML5 and CSS3, this is very helpful. I cannot wait to get an iMac and get a full-sized screen to work with and expand my tool kit. The description in the advertisement said “iCloud support” and it truly supports me!

I do think, however, that it’s false advertising to show the code coloring in the preview screens on the App Store. Unless I’m missing a button or a menu, my version of Textastic has yet to provide a way to change the color of different parts of the markup. Everything you type is exactly the same color. The only thing you can set a color to is the theme so, it’s all gray background with all white font, all black background with all white font, burgundy background with all black font, white background with all black font.... There’s no way to make a teal background with elements in orange, attributes in purple, CSS properties in red, values in gold, and text in black. I have no idea how they got the shots above at all. I’ve been through the menu for four weeks now trying different things. Maybe I’m too new to this? I FINALLY found the manual (the link in the Help menu doesn’t take you directly to a manual… you have to go through a couple screens first). I’ll update my review and let you know what I find… Nope. I found no button or menu for Textastic to set colors to different code types. Ah well, that would be a privilege and not a necessity. I still LOVE the app. :-)

Remnant1018 about Textastic