What do you like best about EmEditor?
FUNCTIONALITY:
There is nothing that EE can't do: that's its main selling point. It's packed with built-in functionality and let's you extend that core functionality with scriptable macros. Think "UltraEdit's flexibility without the slow-as-death macro playback".
EmEditor also comes in handy in unexpected ways: forget Excel, EE is THE BEST way to work with CSV files. As of a few years ago, I've been using EE instead of Excel to quickly process / sort / filter data from my bank accounts and credit cards at tax time.
By the way, the "filter" function extraordinarily useful, and I can't remember seeing it in other editors: type a string and EE hides all but the lines that contain that string. Another, somewhat related setting is the ability (Edit > Narrowing) to restrict the current editing area to a sub-portion of the current file. (Hitting Ctrl+Home goes to the top of that logical area, not the top of the file, and searching is restricted to that active area. Super useful, and I can't remember seeing this in another editor.
You can not just customize menus and items, but even their accelerator-key (e.g., setting Alt+A as shortcut by renaming the "&Search" menu to "Se&arch").
QUALITY:
I'm a fullstack web dev, but I've done quite a bit of Windows dev. I've never seen a piece of software that leverages so well all Windows APIs. You can tell that everything is done carefully and thoughtfully, even the most mundane functionality. (Even the "Tools > Import and Export" uses native wizard and progress bars. If you've ever done Windows dev, you'll know that it's much easier to implement this as a series of submenu items and just saving the appropriate file - EE is programmed by an artisan, if you see what I mean.)
I'm just realizing this as I write this review. I don't think I've ever come across a bug in EmEditor. Stuff that doesn't behave as desired/expected, sure, but no bug or crash or hang - ever. In fact, one of EE's claim to fame is to be able to open huge files. (I can attest that it does: opening a PHP log from a live server and see it open in under a second is something.)
EXTENSIBILITY:
EE is clearly a labor of love. This editor is more regularly updated than any piece of software I know of, and it's been the case since its release around 2007/2008 (from memory - I only started seriously using EE about 10 years ago). As a result, pretty much anything you can think of has been asked by others and in many cases, implemented.
For years, I've been using TextPad for its macros. The macros are saved in a binary format and they can't be customized after the fact. In EE, all macros are stored in editable JS code with a well documented API.
Both of these mean that there's pretty much nothing you can't do with EE.
SUPPORT:
As far as I know, EmEditor is a one-man project. The upside is that Yutaka Emura, EmEditor's creator, provides support himself. On one end of the spectrum you have Sublime Text who's notion of support is to tell you to "search the forum", companies like JetBrains that refer you to their ill-conceived and always slow YouTrack system, or editors that are essentially dead because there's little to no money in that sector anymore. Receiving support from the person who wrote the software is a treat. I hope that many people will buy what is not only objectively the best all-purpose editor on Windows, but also the only one that is actively developed, and has been uninterruptedly so for over a decade. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What do you dislike about EmEditor?
NEGATIVES:
Despite unequivocally recommending EE, let's start with the negatives - not just to get them out of the way but also give this review some credibility. I struggle to find meaningful negatives with EE, but here are the ones that came to mind:
- I wish that EE could give me the kind of insight into my code that JetBrains IDEs do. (But yes, I realize that is a programming editor, not an IDE.)
- It's sometimes difficult to find a particular setting, at least the first time you look for it, but that's common in highly customizable pieces of software. One way EE could be improved is by approaching settings the way VS Code does, offering both a UI (like TextPad or JetBrains) and customizable syntax files (like EditPlus or Sublime Text).
- Also relating to Settings, I wish that these three dialogs could be consolidated: "Properties for current configuration", "Properties for all configurations", and "Customize...". Sometimes it's hard to know where a setting will be stored and I search in the wrong dialog.
- Sometimes EE inserts indents in puzzling places after you hit Enter, for example after a closing HTML tag or after a end-of-line semicolon in JS code. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
