I have been a Sublime Text user for quite some time now but I am always interested in open source software, especially when they are built using web technologies. I decided to install Atom.io today and was surprised by the performances, the features (especially through the package system really close in richness to Sublime's) and the overall quality of the editor. For Brackets users out there, how does it compare?
I've been using it at my job to build prototypes. In general, I'm super-pleased with it, there are only two things that stop it from being awesome:
1. The LiveReload feature stops if you open Chrome DevTools, which I often use to debug. Unfortunately, Brackets' own tools aren't enough to match Chrome DevTools, so I have to work with the LiveReload feature turned off, which is a bummer. I really really hope they fix this.
2. We use LESS at my job, and while there are LESS autocompile plugins, working with LESS in Brackets is still not as seemless as working with CSS. However, I think that with some better plugin support and some tweaks to the current plugins, it eventually could be.
I've got to say though, Brackets has totally replaced Sublime for me as my primary editor whenever I'm working on front-end stuff. Theseus and the other Javascript debugging tools are top-notch. I recommend that any front-end developer at least give it a shot for a week or two.
I believe that "Live Preview" conflicting with Chrome DevTools is a limitation on the Chrome side. Note that the Brackets feature isn't a live "reload" - Brackets pokes into the live DOM and makes changes dynamically, without reloading the page. As I recall, it does this with the same hooks DevTools uses, and Chrome only allows one entity at a time to do such things.
Personally I've gotten in the habit of switching back and forth. I tend to use Live Preview when I'm tweaking layout and design (so much easier than doing things in the inspector and then remembering what changes to reflect in my code), but switching to the browser tools for most script stuff. If Live Preview had a javascript console I suspect I'd hardly use the browser tools..
As others mentioned, you can't use the Chrome dev tools and Live Preview at the same time is because of a limitation in Chrome. We're working on changing how Live Preview works to support different browses and also enable the use of browser tools. It's available as an extension here:
The hour first point, this is a limitation of chrome. They only allow a single debugger to be attached at once. As dev tools and livereload both count as debuggers you can only have 1 active.
Dart has the same issue I believe when connected to their dartium browser.
When I had first installed Atom a few months back, I had performance issues as well, but it does not seem to be the case anymore with all the work they put in the editor's performance last summer.
In my experience atom is really slow at regex find/replace + reindexing projects with lots of files each time you open them. It's going to be nice one day though.
For now my biggest frustration is that Atom does not 'remember' the files/folders I was working on the last time I had it opened, and the Reopen last item does not seem to work at startup.
I've been using Atom for months and I'm getting very frustrated by the slow, buggy performance and utterly terrible autocomplete. I'm giving Brackets a shot because I've heard great things about its autocomplete.
Agreed, Atom is still a diamond in dirt, its just waiting to be polished and then I will try It out. Brackets does the "little" details right. Everything feels good about Brackets and seems to get out of your way. If you are a front end developer then definitely have a go at it.
Lately it has become my editor of choice for JavaScript, TypeScript and MarkDown on Windows. I use a few extensions for linting and live preview and so far they work really well. I hope the startup gets faster with time because that's the only downside I can currently think of. Being open source and cross platform is a big advantage, if I invest time into learning a tool I'd like to be able to use it regardless which OS I'm currently using.
The default link to 1.0 includes something called "Extract". I don't want Extract. Yes, there's a link to just download Brackets underneath this primary button, but given Adobe's form with packaging unnecessary cruft with their software I'd have thought they'd be trying to avoid this sort of nonsense.
I use Brackets for my middle school game programming class (using Phaser). Cross platform, free, and works great for beginners out of the box. Testing out html + js is as simple as hitting a button, no extensions or server or any other hoops necessary.
It made itself the default editor for html, css, js, and php files...without asking me. After using it for a bit, I can't find a reason to drop Sublime in favor of it.
Not only does it assign itself as the default application for a number of common file types, it does so every time you start the application. Which is why I uninstalled it months ago, though if this has been fixed I may give it another shot.
Odd, I've never noticed this behavior before. I just installed the new version and it didn't take over any file types for me. I'm currently using it on Windows, maybe it's a Mac thing?
Edit: Oh wait, I just found this:
"Although Brackets is built in HTML/CSS/JS, it currently runs as a desktop application in a thin native shell, so that it can access your local files."
Still, a demo would be nice. I suppose the "access local files" part is not strictly necessary.
I've been watching Brackets for a while now, and I'm pleased with how it's turned out, across all platforms; the in-line CSS editor and color picker really stuck out to me. I'm impressed by the overall fluidity of the program as well.
Does anyone use the Extract feature? I canned my Creative Cloud after Adobe were hacked, but do a lot of Photoshop work and then building templates from PSDs. Is it as useful as they proclaim? If so, I might need to create a new account.
Extract is pretty brand new, so not so many people yet, but I've played with some previous incarnations (it was previously beta'd as a standalone web service).
That said, it's damned handy if you're turning a PSD comp into HTML/CSS. That's the use case it was made for - smoothing the workflow between the PSD-making designer and the HTML-writing coder. If a PSD comp has, say, a button with a gradient and a drop shadow, then Extract gives you CSS to reproduce that design, without your needing to open Photoshop and copy/paste the gradient colors and so forth. Even does a pretty good job of including prefixed CSS when needed.
My experience was, for reasonably well-formed comps it's a godsend. For pathological PSDs it's less useful, but you're still better off with it than without it. But it all depends how often you have to HTMLify PSDs.
It's been a fun and strange ride with this editor. I've been using it for a while now, I think before the Sprint 20 build. It still has some things to work out and new features it needs, but it's a solid editor for front-end coding.
It's been really fun writing extensions for it, gets me out of my comfort zone of working on websites all day. Really great that once I realize I want the editor to offer something I can just open it and create the feature myself using my current skill sets.
Started using Brackets a couple months ago as I'm on a contract that requires me to work on a client's hardware rather than my own. Killer feature for me has been the inline CSS editing from html. Particularly as I'm stuck using a single monitor atm, this is nice as it lets me keep my css generally hidden instead of concurrently displayed as I often do in other editors.
