ByteMe Code Editor for Software Design, Development, and Programming On-the-Go

Ok, so I took a leap ‘o faith and bought this app for $2.99 because I’ve been looking otherwise fruitlessly for a free or low-cost code editor app for editing HTML files on my iPhone 6. After trying a half-dozen or so other, seemingly promising apps that all turned out to be gross disappointments, I was pleasantly surprised by this ByteMe editor app. Lately, I’ve been using BlueGriffon to edit HTML5 files on my laptop, and this app complements it quite well. Not clear to me yet how extensively ByteMe supports HTML5, but it’s got a fairly simple interface and reasonable set of code/markup editing features. I like the basic code auto-completion and ability to scale-up the text size for readability. I’ve been using this app mow for about three weeks and thus far, find the text editing functionality and other features to be fairly straightforward without any apparent bugs encountered. Since I keep my work-in-progress files within DropBox, it would be great if this app had direct file access support for this particular cloud resource. Hopefully will come with a future update. However, for time being, I can use the DropBox app’ “open in...” feature to open my files directly into ByteMe, and then just use ByteMe’s export function to save them back into DropBox. So far the only significant shortcoming I’ve found with this editor is its page preview functionality. Preview does work, but it has a default style-sheet with fixed page width and text size that is very small. Altogether, this makes it nearly unreadable for anyone lacking excellent vision. True, one can zoom-in upon the page to increase magnification, but then always awkward horizontal scrolling becomes a necessity. It would be great if the preview allowed for adjustable page width and text size, and even more super if a page could actually be viewed within a standard browser such as Safari, Opera, or Puffin. But all in all, a great beginning and looking forward to additional features in the future. Certainly ByteMe does a nice job filling an app niche otherwise woefully lacking in good options.

I was stoked for this app and the work behind it, so I didn’t hesitate spending whatever money it asked for on it. However, I hoped it would’ve had the option to run the code or test it. I was kind of hoping it was the ATOM of iOS (I know that is a big proclamation to make in regards to a starter app, but I am tirelessly looking for ATOM on iOS). Plus I noticed major bugs as it crashes whenever I do anything but type the code or make a new folder, especially when I choose to “open with”. All in all, hoped for a lot and was pretty disappointed.

Honestly, I like the idea of this app. I have been looking for a code or text editor to write html files in, among other coding. So I created a test html / css / javascript file: a clone of pong. I understand that html files need to be run in web browsers; so, how do I export the document into a web browser? I can't say it's entirely the developer's fault, since Safari has no option to open files the way it does on a desktop Mac. There is also no place on an iPad to just store random documents, in this case: a .html document. So I wrote the code, but now I don't know what to DO with the code. Well at least the file that is. Maybe there's an option in the app that I'm not seeing, or something I'm not doing right? I'm very used to editing code on my desktop, so doing it from an iPad is new to me.

This app is off to a great start! It's for the experienced hard-coders out there.. Has some great features that you don't get with other similar software like: it auto guesses your code-statements, and helps you remember closing brackets & parentheses. It's not totally intuitive how to know if the file actually has saved. The preview seems like may not work yet? I am seeing //REM statements displayed. The preview button disappears from the editing window..? :/ Looks like files currently have limited transfer options either thru: notepad, google drive, or cpanelwebdisk.. I haven't set it up yet but hoping the cpanelwebdisk will link up w my server files.. ;)