The current embodiment of Arachnophilia represents well over a decade of development work in three phases:

• 1993-1996: An earlier program named "WebThing"
• 1996-2002: A C++ version of Arachnophilia
• 2002-present: Java versions of Arachnophilia

This specification list applies to Arachnophilia 5.5 and newer:

Property	Comment
Description	Web development and general programming tool, with graphic desktop multiple-document interface
Copyright	Arachnophilia is Copyright 2015, P. Lutus. All rights reserved.
Licensing	GPL version 3.0
Source Code	The Arachnophilia source code, in the form of a NetBeans project, is available here.
Language	Java
Required Language Version	Java 1.6
System Requirements	Java 1.6 Runtime (available free at http://java.com)
Platform Compatibility	Any platform for which there is a Java 1.6 Runtime engine
Web-specific Features	Syntax-colored Web page editor with/without line wrap XHTML beautifier and syntax analyzer User-editable XHTML tag toolbars for common Web development activities Sophisticated regular expression editor and interpreter for managing page content Table Wizard to turn plain-text tabular content into XHTML tables List Wizards to turn plain-text lists into ordered and unordered XHTML lists Built-in FTP service to export local content to the Web Rich-Text-Format document to XHTML converter Timed autoSave feature for those who forget to click "Save" very often — or at all Spell checker
Programming-specific Features	Syntax Coloring for many source file types (full list below) Line wrap option with no effect on syntax coloring (unlike earlier versions) Line numbering option Interactive edit/compile sessions in which compiler error messages highlight corresponding source file lines Editor auto-indent feature to preserve source structure during editing Beautifiers for common source file types (C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Perl, Ruby, Bash Shell Script and others, list below) Number base converter The ability to automatically turn a source file into a syntax-colored XHTML Web page for publication
Supported Filetypes for Editing and Syntax Coloring	Name Mime type Accepted suffixes (user-modifiable) HTML text/html xhtml,html,htm,shtml,asp, stm,idc,htx,ssi,cfm,hts Text text/plain txt,text,doc,bat,log,tbd JavaScript text/javascript js CSS text/css css Python text/python py Ruby text/ruby rb C++ text/cpp cpp Java text/java java Shell Script text/unix sh Perl text/perl pl PHP text/perl php CGI text/cgi cgi Actionscript text/actionscript as Assembly text/asm asm BBCode text/bbcode bbc C text/c c Clojure text/clojure clj C# text/cs cs LaTeX text/c tex Delphi text/delphi dpr,p Fortran text/fortran f Groovy text/groovy groovy Java Server Page text/jsp jsp Lisp text/lisp el Lua text/lua lua Makefile text/makefile mak MXML text/mxml mxml Properties text/properties properties SAS text/sas sas Scala text/scala scala SQL text/sql sql Tcl text/tcl tcl Windows batch script text/bat bat XML text/xml xml,glade
Supported Filetypes for Beautification/Reformatting	Identified by suffix: XHTML, XML, HTML, C, C++, Java, Ruby, Perl, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, Shell Script Identified by heuristic: any source filetype containing '{','}' braces
User Customization: Macro System	All program menus and toolbars are defined by user-modifiable macros Users can modify the appearance or behavior of any menu item or toolbar button by right-clicking it and editing its content A customization panel is provided to directly access and modify the macro definition tree Users may create or delete menus, toolbars and individual macros, as well as add to, edit or delete parts of the default macro set Any Arachnophilia command may be entered into a macro by name Under control of macros, external programs may be executed to provide document input or to modify document contents All user settings and macro definitions are saved between program runs Macro definitions may be exported, imported and shared between Arachnophilia installations
User Customization: Portable Storage Device	Users may install to a portable storage device (example: USB stick) a copy of Arachnophilia, plus a set of custom user definitions, for use while moving from machine to machine.