If you’re a programmer or developer that juggles several projects at a time, your code can sometimes be lost between multiple workstations, or worse, lost in some sort of catastrophic system failure. If only you’d had a chance to run a backup first! With everything going to the cloud these days, wouldn’t it make sense to have your valuable projects protected in the fluffy white stuff as you work on them?
ShiftEdit is a web-based development environment for HTML, PHP, Ruby, Python and more, and they’re adding new languages all the time. Like the usual desktop-based WYSIWYG counterparts, ShiftEdit offers ‘Code’ and ‘Design’ views for creating your applications, as well as syntax highlighting for their expanding portfolio. As you code, your projects are automatically saved, safe and sound in the cloud and accessible from any computer with a browser and internet connection.
If you require FTP access and database connectivity for your projects, ShiftEdit gives you the ability to connect to one site for free with the option to add unlimited sites by upgrading to their Premier service ($5/month). ShiftEdit also gives you access to basic version control tools in case you’ll be collaborating with other users.
If you’re looking for enterprise-class tools that help you whip out projects at lightning speed, ShiftEdit may not be everything you need. The IDE currently lacks auto-complete functionality and only provides real-time syntax debugging for JavaScript and PHP. Combine that with a finicky FTP tool, and you may want to steer clear with your high-impact projects. That said, ShiftEdit is on the right track to being a feature-rich IDE with new things being added all the time, like Dropbox support.
With more and more production-grade development tools becoming web-based, don’t be surprised if you’re developing straight to the cloud in the next few years. Give ShiftEdit a try and put yourself ahead of the curve.
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