JEdit - Reception

Reception

In general jEdit has received positive reviews from software writers.

Rob Griffiths wrote in April 2002 for MAC OS X HINTS saying he was "very impressed" and naming it "pick of the week". He cited its file memory upon reopening, its ability to notice if an open file was changed on disk by another program, syntax coloring, including that users can create their own colour schemes, split windows feature, show line number feature, convertible tabs to soft-tabs and view sidebars. He also praised its customization possibilities using the extensive preferences panel and the "on the fly" search engine, which searches while typing.

Griffiths noted that the application has a few drawbacks, such as that it is "a bit slow at scrolling a line at a time" and that because it is a Java application it doesn't have the full Aqua interface.

Also reviewing the application in April 2002, Daniel Steinberg writing for O'Reilly Media said "The strength of jEdit for Java developers comes from the plug-ins contributed by the community...For the most part, there's nothing here that couldn't be done with BBEdit or even with Emacs or vi. jEdit packages the capabilities much more nicely and makes it easy to call often-used functionality using the plug-ins. Where I saw NetBeans as overkill, others may see jEdit as underkill for an IDE or overkill for a text editor. I find it Mac friendly and easy to use. I don't expect too much from it, so I tend to be pleased with what I get."

Scott Beatty reviewing jEdit on SitePoint in 2005 particularly noted the application's folding feature along with its search and replace and PHP syntax highlighting capabilities. He recommended the use of the PHPParser plug-in. The PHPParser is a PHP parser that checks for PHP syntax errors whenever a PHP code file is loaded or saved. He noted that downloading jEdit is simple, but that getting and installing the plug-ins to customize it for individual use can be a complex process: "Beware that a full setup requires a series of downloads, and that this process can take time."

Writing in December 2011, reviewer Rares Aioanei praised jEdit's versatility, stating "jEdit's design allows you to use it as a simple editor, but also use it as an IDE and expand its functionality via plugins so that it becomes exactly what you want it to be for the task or language at hand." but also adding that "jEdit is not, however, an IDE with everything but the Christmas tree, like Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio. Rather, it's a compact application for editing code, providing practical tools along with basic IDE features."