by , 2:15 PM EDT, August 28th, 2008

Bare Bones Software announced the immediate availability of BBEdit 9 on Thursday. The new version of the code and text editing application added a non-modal search feature, auto text and code completion, the ability to view a document in multiple windows, and more.

BBEdit 9 can directly search Xcode projects, and replaces file groups with the Projects feature. Projects allows users to group and organize items, and also supports renaming, creating and deleting files and folders. Projects are searchable and can be processed by text factories.

The built-in text engine now supports editing text in disk browsers and search results, and the new text completion feature suggests words and code based on the current document's context. BBEdit 9 also supports displaying real-time document statistics including the number of characters or words in a document.

BBEdit's autosave now saves every minute and includes all open documents and window locations. Users can track coding tasks for Ruby, C, Objective-C, and C++, and can display FIXME and TODO items in pop-ups.

Version 9 added a scratchpad window that can be used for quick text or code editing without having to create an extra document. BBEdit can also read and write .bz2-compressed files, compare document versions, and synchronize its application support files via MobileMe, includes updated Ruby, Objective-C and C++, and YAML modules.

BBEdit 9 is priced at US$125 and is available at the Bare Bones Software Web site. Educational user can purchase version 9 for $49, and upgrades from any version cost $30.