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New Ebook for Text Mavens: “Take Control of BBEdit”

As writers, we care deeply about our tools — sure, we could write in TextEdit, and we create our Take Control ebooks in Pages, but the vast majority of our writing happens in BBEdit. This may seem odd, given that BBEdit started out life as a programmer’s editor. But, over the years, Bare Bones Software has extended BBEdit in ways that make it a highly effective tool for people like us who write prose and work with HTML. BBEdit is a key part of the automated publishing system we created for TidBITS (if only it could write articles for us too!) and although we’re not going to name names, it is also used by many other top Mac writers and well-known publications.

We’ll be the first to admit that BBEdit has a wealth of productivity-enhancing features that few people — even long-time users — know about or take advantage of fully. Because it’s such a deep program, we’re particularly pleased to bring you our latest ebook, the 199-page “Take Control of BBEdit,” written by Glenn Fleishman and created in collaboration with our friends at Bare Bones Software. As a special deal, we’re offering it at a $5 introductory price through 9 April 2012, after which the price will go up to $10.

In “Take Control of BBEdit,” Glenn explains how to use BBEdit 10 to accomplish real-world tasks more efficiently than ever before, focusing on three main areas of usage: essential text-processing features for all BBEdit users, working with HTML from the level of the individual tag all the way to a dynamic Web site, and managing multi-resource projects.

Rich Siegel, founder and CEO of Bare Bones Software, said, “Glenn Fleishman has done an excellent job of introducing BBEdit’s powerful capabilities in an entertaining, educational, and approachable style. ‘Take Control of BBEdit’ reaches beyond any manual to show the actual how-to aspects of using BBEdit to save time or save your bacon. We recommend it, whether you’re an old hand or brand new to BBEdit.”

A quick aside: At $49.99, BBEdit is cheap for the power it brings, but if you aren’t using it now and want to get a sense of what it provides, check out the free TextWrangler, also from Bare Bones Software. TextWrangler lacks BBEdit’s HTML tools, clippings, text factories, text completion, and projects, but has the same basic interface and core editing and searching features. The book doesn’t call out differences between TextWrangler and BBEdit, but much of it applies to both apps.

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