Tired of paying hundreds of dollars every year or so to upgrade your Web development environment? Has the manufacturer discontinued support of your tool of choice? Upset with nasty activation procedures that treat you like a criminal when you pay for software and then have the gall to switch machines or update your hardware? Sick of the platform lock-in? Me too!

There are several free alternatives out there for Web developers who need solid cross-platform support. One of the most ambitious and promising candidates is Aptana, an Eclipse-based environment geared toward Web development. I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at this over the next few days.

From the Aptana website:

Aptana is a robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications.

Highlights include the following features:

  • Code Assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, including your own JavaScript functions
  • Outliner that gives a snapshot view of your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code structure
  • FTP/SFTP uploading, downloading and synchronization
  • JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code
  • Error and warning notification for your code
  • Support for Aptana UI customization and extensions
  • Cross-platform support
  • Free and open source licensed under the Eclipse Public License, v1.0…”