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You can use any text editor for creating a source file for ConTeXt (in case of desperation, even notepad should do :). A lot of editors provide generic TeX syntax highlighting (not based on a word list). But some have a bit more support for ConTeXt:

ConTeXt-aware

Editor features Linux Win MacOS X Remarks
Emacs with AUCTeX S T U  ? y y y Extremely powerful & highly configurable text editor for CTRL- and ALT- key lovers.
The official AUCTeX distribution beginning with 11.50 has ConTeXt support. Berend de Boers ConTeXt mode for Emacs has been merged with the former ConTeXt support in AUCTeX by Patrick Gundlach. More AUCTeX has further AUCTeX customization for ConTeXt. If you write documents with bibliographies, indexes, or cross-references, you may also be interested in Using reftex with ConTeXt. There is also Emacs-muse which is an extension.
Vim S T U 2  ? y y y Extremely powerful & highly configurable text editor. It operates in different "modes": you type in text in "insert mode" and pass commands to the editor in "normal mode." Whether you prefer Vim or emacs is a religious question of the highest importance. (See also: Vim)
Scite C S T U y y y (X11) ConTeXt support not before v1.6.x. ConTeXt support files come with the ConTeXt distribution in directory context/data/context.properties. See also the manual mcite.pdf SciTE on MacOSX 10.3 is Adam's quick-and-dirty port of SciTE to Panther/X11.
TeXshop  ? P S T U - - y (native) Simple Cocoa IDE. Configuration instructions
gedit S U  ? y - y (X11) GNOME editor
klat S T U  ? y - y (X11) KDE editor, based on kate
iTeXMac  ? P S T U + - - y (native) More advanced Cocoa IDE (one of its modes doesn't like tabulated source)
TextMate C - S T U  ? - - y (native) ConTeXt bundle not yet in distribution, but you can download one at [1]. There is an extra page
Notepad++ S T U 2 + y Npp is one of the most powerful and useful text editors around. For windows users (you can also use it under wine) wanting a more modern interface with loads of included features (see especially the TextFX menu), it deserves a close look.
Kate - - S  ? U - (KDE3) / 2 (KDE4) + y y (cygwin)  ? (probably x11) Kate is an advanced multi-document text editor for KDE (KWrite is in the same package, but handles only single documents). It has already built-in LaTeX syntax highlighting, but you can install a file that provides ConTeXt syntax highlight. It is planned to be included in the Kate package itself in the (near) future though.
Kile C P S  ? U - (KDE3) / 2 (KDE4) + y y (cygwin)  ? (probably x11) Kile is a very advanced KDE-based editor/environment that primarily aims at LaTeX users, but can be set up to refer to ConTeXt-related programs to create/build documents. As Kile uses Katepart as its editor, the same method applies for ConTeXt syntax highlighting as it does for Kate. Other settings can be changed in the settings dialog, to make it ConTeXt-aware. Amongst other advanced features, Kile has to offer project management, inverse and forward TEX<->DVI search, side tree view of the document structure (e.g. by chapters, sections etc.)
Smultron - P S T - - - - - y Configuration instructions
TeXWorks P S T U (y) y y

features:

  • C = TeX/ConTeXt command completion
  • P = PDF preview
  • S = TeX/ConTeXt syntax highlighting
  • T = ConTeXt typesetting
  • U = Unicode (UTF-8) handling
  • 2 = bidirectional edit (right-to-left)
  • + = more…
  •  ? = previous feature probable but unsure

Other editors

The following editors have no specific ConTeXt support, but do a good job for generic (La)TeX typesetting, so you may use them for ConTeXt as well:

Editor features Linux Win MacOS X Remarks
WinEdt - - S - - - - - y - A nice, configurable Windows editor, very suitable for newbies to (La)TeX. A large collection of buttons with Greek letters and other (math) symbols is very helpfulp when typesetting math. It also has spell checker, but no support for UTF yet.
LaTeX users can also find many templates (tables, enumerations, ...) and compiling/previewing the documents by clicking a button. This is supported For ConTeXt also. You can configure it easily.
(WinEdt is not free software, but shareware with 31+ days trial.)
NEdit - - S - - - - y y  ? X server (Cygwin/Xorg) is needed to run Nedit on Windows
TeXnicCenter - P S - - - - - y - Oriented towards the use of LaTeX, but can also be used for processing ConTeXt documents. A large collection of buttons with Greek letters and other (math) symbols is very helpfulp when typesetting math. It also has spell checker.
LaTeX users can also find many templates (tables, enumerations, ...) and compiling/previewing the documents by clicking a button (it is easy to Configure TeXnicCenter for ConTeXt use).
(TeXnicCenter is freely available under GPL).

SyncTeX

For synchronising between text in PDF and TeX source see SyncTeX.