Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.
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Brackets
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Brackets is a free and open source text editor developed at Adobe under the MIT license, featuring inline editing, live preview, and a wide range of extensions.
Compared to coding programs, I've found Brackets to be more robust. Some aspects of Atom I've found to be somewhat cumbersome (JSON customization when GUI should be an option), but ultimately Atom is a better experience. Other programs like Dreamweaver tend to be clunky and …
Atom is very similar to Brackets as it is a javascript based editor. I haven't used it as much, I tried it briefly when I was having an annoying bug in Brackets. It has a very rich ecosystem of plugins. Some of my learned behaviors and tools from Brackets were missing. I'm …
Brackets is an open-source IDE and free to use. It is specifically used for developing web applications that provide brackets an edge over the other available IDE in industry. There are more features available in Brackets as compared to other IDE. Being, Open-source, It is …
Atom is great for simple HTML coding. It's fast, has intuitive shortcuts and several options. I particularly love the "convert spaces to tabs" function that I haven't seen in other editors.
I'm not sure how it would fair in more serious web development today, if there are plugins for live updates of the page you are working on...
But the problem is that it has been discontinued so you know there are no new features or fixes coming through.
Brackets can handle most text editing problems, at least if you have a file small enough that it opens. But with so many free and open-source editors out there, it is easy to have multiple tools that fit specific niches. If you are editing HTML and CSS, get Brackets.
Atom is highly customizable and allows for various themes and extensions that can make your code easier to read.
Atom has many code hinting features that allow users to write faster and integrate with services likeLINT that can clean up your code once your done to meet your internal teams style choices.
It's very fast and manages projects well - Accessing other files within a related folder(s) is very easy and intuitive.
The Live Preview feature is extremely helpful. You can make tweaks to your CSS and then see how it affects the pge you're coding.
The recently added file tree feature is really a time saver. You can move files with a drop and drag feature without ever minimizing the program.
One of my favorite features is the ability to update the core program with extensions. Some of the extensions are simple, like adding themes, while others are a offer a little more assistance like creating Lorem Ipsum text for you.
Well Atom is open source so the re-new is a no brainer. The only way I would stop using Atom is if the developers somehow made it not function well. Or, if the project got forked to a commercial version or something. Or, there could be the case that development stops or that it was not updated on this or that platform
I give Atom a 9 because it is one of the most modern text editors built with JavaScript intentionally to allow the editor to be changed and modified with custom functionality that a team may need. I think I would otherwise give atom an 8 due to support, but it gets a 9/10 because of the extensibility/plugin capability.
As far as usability, text editors are about as simple as you can get in the GUI world. The little features that make Brackets unique are intuitive enough that you don't really need a manual to find them and come to rely on them. If anybody knows enough about coding and markup enough to be looking for different editors, they will be up to speed before the download finishes.
Atom has an active forum and a Slack group where you can ask technical questions. Occasionally, the authors will pop in to answer a few questions here and there, but most of the time, its other helpful users who will assist you. Though they aren't the most knowledgeable, they are at least timely.
As for plugin support, that differs with each plugin, but as I mentioned before, many plugins are no longer maintained.
Brackets has a very extensive support site. Everything is organized nicely for easy navigation. If you can't find an answer you can easily file an issue with them and they will be quick to respond. What's cool is you can also message them on Slack, if you request an invite first. Slack is a very popular program right now so it's great having that integration.
Our company likes to keep things open, and we don't want to prevent developers from customizing their environment the way they want. Atom seemed to be a lot more open than our existing tools and has good community support on pretty much any programming language. This can create some confusion since adding too many extensions or customizing can make the tool slower than it is supposed to be.
Brackets can be considered as the barebones version of a more complex piece of software like Dreamweaver. We selected Brackets due to the simplicity of the UI and the ease of use. In our case we do not need all the additional tools and gadgets that other, more complex software packages offer. We need something that's quick, easy, uncluttered and focuses specifically on our needs, which are seeing code and editing code. In this case no frills and complex UIs are required.
The tool we use when we need quick fixes. Allows fast, reliable scripting to fix urgent problems in our applications.
When applications grow from 5-10 files to 100's, they need to be migrated to a heavier-duty IDE. This can be cumbersome and quite annoying, but is necessary to maintain code integrity on such a large scale (since it cannot be done with the limited default toolset of Atom).
ROI is great. The version of the tool we are using is free so not a whole of lot “investment” went into it. And the work we can accomplish with it more than makes up for the “cost.”
The ease of use makes it simple for anyone new to the tool to start using it and contributing to the project.
