"But wait," you're probably thinking. "Doesn't a free text editor come with Mac OS X? You know, the one called TextEdit?" Well, yes, that program does exist. And it's just fine for tasks such as reading the release notes for an application or creating gently formatted documents. But TextEdit is really a simple word processor--an app for typing and styling text. A text editor is a program for inputting and manipulating text, working with big text files, and making changes across multiple files at once, and TextWrangler is a shining example of the genre. (One limitation of a text editor is that it works only with plain-text files, not with styled text.)

Macworld's , covering version 2.0, was nearly six years ago. TextWrangler is essentially a "lite" version of Bare Bones' $99 flagship program, , and just as BBEdit has improved dramatically since 2005, so has TextWrangler.

Like its big sibling, TextWrangler is beloved by programmers and other geeks because of its rich feature set for working with code. The program supports syntax coloring (displaying particular terms and code sections in specific colors) and code folding (selectively hiding and showing sections of a file) for a long list of programming and markup languages. You can access and edit documents residing on FTP and SFTP servers without manually downloading them to your Mac. And even if you're not a programmer, you'll appreciate the huge selection of text-manipulation tools, including complete control over line wrapping, case conversion, and line numbering; the ability to insert the contents of other files into the current document; and much more.

One of a text editor's most important features is Find and Replace, and TextWrangler excels here. Instead of a modal search dialog--one that requires you to complete your finding and replacing before getting back to your document--TextWrangler's search windows, for both the standard Find feature and the Multi-File Search feature, allow you to move freely between open documents and the search window. (You can actually perform find-and-replace operations on files that aren't even open in TextWrangler.) If you know a bit about (commonly referred to as ), you can construct intricate search criteria that let you zero in on just the text you want to modify.

The Find All feature presents a two-pane search-results window, with the top pane populated by a list of search results. Selecting a result displays, in the bottom pane, a selection of the text containing the found string, with that string highlighted. You can edit the text right in the search-results window, so you don't have to open the original file in a separate window. These editable text views are also used by operations such as browsing disks or language-syntax checking. The interface is convenient, saves you time, and reduces window clutter. (The history of your search-and-replace operations is also preserved, even when you quit TextWrangler.)