Editors and IDEs for Java, JSP, PHP, HTML, JavaScript and other languages

Modelworks provides a family of customizable products with a script-based architecture for editing text files and developing desktop and Internet applications.

Products

Our current products are JPad Pro and SitePad Pro. Both products include basic Java support that uses Sun's JDK/SDK to compile and run. SitePad Pro includes all the features of JPad Pro plus support for XPath, VRML, C# and other .NET languages. See Product Comparisons for details.

All Modelworks products are available for evaluation. You can download an evaluation version from the downloads page.

Why use a Modelworks editor?

A key goal for our products is to make it easy for you to work with many different file types. Syntax coloring makes it easy to identify key words, comments and strings. Code folding (outlining) lets you see the overall structure of a file by hiding sections you don't need to work with. Tabs let you switch quickly between editors. Split windows and multiple windows of the same file are available options. The Full Screen feature can be configured to show both menus and toolbars. A reformat command is available to cleanup indentation. Support for all code pages, including ANSI, UNICODE and UTF-8 encodings, lets you edit in any language.

The workspace panel provides access to help, tools (scripts) and multiple views of projects, folders, and open files. Open files are listed in the windows menu, in a windows dialog, in a workspace open files panel, and visible in the tabbed editor panel.

The built-in help system provides content, index, search, and favorites panels that let you quickly look up information in html based document sets (such as APIs in javadocs). You can build your own index files using scripts or download pre-built index files from our site. See the Updates page for a list of available index files.

Java Integrated Development Environment (IDE)

Use the Java commands to easily build, debug and run Java programs. F1 keyword help is available for JavaDocs. Just place the caret in a Java keyword, class or variable and hit F1 to get help. The Java IDE will work with any JDK version including version 5 and it is easy to switch between JDK versions. More...

JSP, ASP, PHP and Script Support

Editing dynamic file types can become more difficult as more logic is added to the page. To make these files easier to edit, the editor sets the background color (default is a light yellow) for JSP, ASP, PHP and Script code. Code and HTML tags are syntax colored and indented separately so you can more easily see the logic flow. JavaScript or VBScript code within the Script tag is also syntax colored and indented separately. In addition you can configure the IE Preview and Mozilla Preview tabs to quickly see what the page will look like.

Easy Folder Navigation

Use places to quickly locate or to specify files. Places include a named list of files in one or more directories, named directories, and directories. For example, a named directory such as @MyProjects is used in place of a path such as C:\Documents and Settings\Joe Black\My Documents\Modelworks\MyProjects. Named directories are also accessible from the standard file dialog.

Easy File Navigation

Use line numbers to quickly see where you are in a file. Bookmarks can be used to go to places you have marked. A content panel can be used to go to specific content such as a class or method. In the output panel you can just double click on a error message or search result to go to the specific location in a file.

Outlining/Code Folding

Editing a large file? Then you can use code folding to create an outline view of the file so you can focus on what you are editing. For many file types, such as Java, code folding is automatic. There are also scripts to let you manually manage code folding.

Very Large Files

Do you need to view or edit very large files such as database dumps or log files? Our professional editors can open a 65 MB file (1.7 million lines) in 2-3 seconds. Closing a 65 MB file that has not been modified takes around 1 second. Saving and closing a changed 65 MB file takes around 14 seconds. For comparison copying a 65 MB file from the desktop takes around 4 seconds. These times were taken on a 1.8 GHz machine with 512 MB of RAM using a local file.

Easy Search and Replace

Use the Finder toolbar to quickly search and replace in the current file, in all open files, in a directory or in a place. The search engine can search by case, whole word or regular expression. There is also a smart replace option that keeps the case of the words replaced (e.g., replacing 'pieChart' by 'BarChart' will result in 'barChart').

Powerful Smart Key

Many advanced editing features are provided by smart keys (a key pattern that invokes a script). For example, to complete a Java reference while typing you can just type ctrl+space. Other smart keys make completing code easy for many common language constructs. For example, to complete a for statement just type a tab after typing for. Smart keys can also be used for other purposes. One example is the VRML d2r smart key in SitePad Pro which will convert degrees to radians. Another example of smart keys is the highlight smart key which will briefly highlight the matching open delimiter when the closing delimiter is typed. See View/Smart Keys... for a list of installed Smart Keys. Note that the list of installed smart keys vary by file type.

Spell Checking

Spell checking is designed for code with options to spell check Pascal and Camel cased words can be subword by subword. Other options let you choose to check any combination of code, comments and strings.

Source Code

The distribution includes all the source code for the 750+ scripts used to implement much of the functionality of the Editor. Scripts are currently written in JavaScript. Starting with SitePad Pro 6.x you can also write scripts in any .NET language.

Customization

Because the source code is included for all the scripts there are many ways to customize the editor. For example, if you want a dialog warning when you have passed the beginning or end of a file when searching interactively you can edit the onProcessApplicationNotice script in the Tools/Eventhandlers/Application folder. There are many other ways to customize the editor such as adding or changing the smart key completion scripts, adding your own file types or by creating custom upload scripts using FTP.