Brackets contains all your coding needs in one simple editor
December 18, 2018

Brackets contains all your coding needs in one simple editor

William Ruthrauff | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Brackets

While not used by the company as a whole, there are pockets of us that use this free code editor. I intially was using another product which was offered by the company, but eventually was removed as an offering. In speaking with another more experienced coder, he had suggested using Brackets. I downloaded the editor and have never looked back. When anyone comes to me for advice on editors to use, I let them know what is out there, but always guide them to Brackets.
  • 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.
  • Since Brackets is an open source software, it is always improving. So if you feel it is lacking something, shortly thereafter it almost always appears in the next software release.
  • While using extensions are at your own risk, I have sometimes found an extension that caused a problem. It was easily resolved by deleting the software and then reinstalling.
  • Live Preview sometimes doesn't work for me. While most of the time it does, it almost always seems to not work when I need it to work the most.
  • As there is no cost to this open source software, the value you get from using it is immeciate.
  • One way to give back, is to become a contributor to the software. They offer suggestions on whays to contribute like writing extenisons.



There are many different brands of code editors
available. Sublime text, Notepad ++ and Coda come to mind. While
they all pretty much offer the same core features, each has their own little intricacies,
which usually means you pick the one which you personally like and become
comfortable with. But one of the things I like about Brackets is it is
supported by Adobe. Adobe has quite a few Creative Cloud applications geared
towards internet/intranet development and maintenance. Yet, they are behind
this simple but powerful tool. And when you have such a big mainstream company
like Adobe behind a product, you develop a trust for that product. I
actually have used a combination of the three products mentioned a few moments
ago, and when someone recommended using Brackets, I decided to stay with it and
delete the others. I’ve yet to regret that decision and I have never looked
back.


When I'm designing a specific page, I can line up all the folders and files in the left File Tree panel. This keeps me organized and able to find things as I need them. Once I'm organized, I'm ready to start coding. Brackets allows you to control quite a bit of your environment, which contributes to your efficiency at coding in an effort free environment. One of the standard features of the color coding of tags really makes a difference. As I'm reviewing the code, generally I can quickly notice a missing </> or some other typo. Plus the color coding often helps you quickly find a particular line you need. And speaking of color, when you hover over a hexadecimal value in the code, a box pops up showing you the color of that code. This is particularly helpful when you have multiple colors and you want to make sure that your CSS is spot on.