I successfully built, tested and deployed a site for a client using nothing but Bespin after my development machine tanked. Obviously there was some adjusting to do, having different quirks than I was used to.
As a code editor, it's lacking a lot of things like effective keyboard-shortcuts. There are a few gestures that are already in place, and I like the ability to quickly save with a right-click which brings up a wheel of options. The last time I used it was maybe Feb so I'm sure there have been a lot of changes to this.
As a file manager, I think this is where Bespin shines brightest. The ability to fetch and put files from remote servers is brilliantly executed; though lacking-I'd like to be able to unpackage web directories that I grab from my FTP server, but the fact alone that this exists given the form of Bespin (web based) was a huge deal for me. A lot of the file management options are replicated both in a GUI file tree and a CLI dialog box. Again, this is probably the strongest features of Bespin.
Long story short: yes it does have quite a ways to go, but with the progress that's been made so far, I think when Mozilla releases RC1 it will probably be a damn good contender for code editing.
/note: I have not used the collaboration features, so obviously no comment is made on that.
I'm the product manager for Bespin, so I'd certainly be happy to say a couple of things about the status.
Since the Bespin that you've used, we've been putting a ton of effort into the infrastructure on the client side. We intend to keep pushing on the client side until it's an editor that is very competitive with desktop editors. Right now, there are still some gaps we need to fill in (for example, the editor doesn't support real tabs). But the infrastructure we have has firmed up very nicely. It's got the potential for lots of interesting plugins. Our keyboard system supports pluggable keybindings (just waiting for someone to come along and build up emacs and vi :) We've got an Embedded package that's easy to hook up to whatever site/server you need to.
And that's where the server change referred to here comes from. We're going to redo the server with an eye toward people running their own Bespins, which eliminates scalability and security concerns that make it hard to implement the most useful Bespin possible.
There are many people using Bespin in their own applications today, and that package just keeps getting better. For the folks like you using the full server, there will be a dip in functionality, but in the end you'll be able to get a Bespin server that can do anything you care to make it do via plugins.
Sorry to hear about the trouble. We do try to be helpful on the mailing list, and I will certainly agree that Bespin is alpha software at this point.
Docs are located here:
https://bespin.mozillalabs.com/docs/
Themes are coming in Bespin 0.8, which is probably about a week away. 0.8 is still alpha, but it's moving closer.
Multiple editors on a page will likely be supported soon. I did a promising experiment last week and we need to work through some of the details.
It could be said that IE aspires to support Bespin ;) IE9 is going to have considerably improved support for the latest standards, and there are rumors that it will support Canvas, which is how Bespin draws its text. We also use CSS3 flexible boxes to lay out the interface. Using those advanced features, Bespin supports Firefox, Safari and Chrome.
Granted our "modern browsers only" policy means that Bespin isn't right for some applications. That's okay with us. The users who we think will ultimately come to love Bespin are in the 40% of web browsers that are using a modern browser.
Kevin Bespin PM
