When it debuted in the fall, Textastic offered developers and Web designers a way to perform plain text editing and syntax highlighting from the comfort of their iPad. The latest update to the mobile app from developer Alexander Blach looks to make it even easier for those programmers to access their files, with the addition of Dropbox and FTP support.
Previous releases of Textastic let users transfer files through a variety of integrated connectivity options—a built-in WebDAV server, Mac or PC networking, iTunes file sharing, or that old standby e-mail. You could also open files with the help of a third-party app such as GoodReader—provided you had such an app installed on your iPad in the first place.
The newly released Textastic 2.0 update expands the app’s file transfer options to FTP and the Dropbox file-sharing service. That means users can connect to remote file servers from within Textastic, without needing to have their computer powered up.
Dropbox and FTP support highlight the changes in Textastic 2.0, but they’re not the only improvements. The update also promises an enhanced find-and-replace feature that searches for and replace newline or tab characters. The app adds support for multitasking, while a new read-only mode means that users can look through source code files without making any accidental changes. Textastic 2.0 also adds auto-correction and auto-capitalization settings.
The iPad app requires iOS 4.2 or later. Textastic costs $10 to download.