Until I read John Gruber's fairly long post about BBEdit 8, I was not convinced in the $49 to upgrade from BBEdit 7.1 to 8 was worth it. He is a good salesman though (he used to work for Bare Bones). So I downloaded the demo and tried it out. This new version rocks. It gets my vote for the $50 upgrade.
My favorite new features are not even the most powerful. I love the yellow highlight behind the current line of code/text you are working on. The new documents drawer/pull down menu is also very nice. I like having multiple windows open and not having such a cluttered workspace.
Text Factories look to be a very powerful new feature, I will have to look into them more when I have the time. There are so many other new features I like about the new version, but i will stop at those.
Be sure to download the demo. I highly recommend it. Also be sure to read John Gruber's post about BBEdit 8.
