Brackets (text editor)

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Brackets is a free open-source editor written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with a primary focus on Web Development.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was created by Adobe Systems, licensed under the MIT License, and is currently maintained on GitHub. Brackets is available for cross-platform download on Mac, Windows, and Linux.

On November 4, 2014, Adobe announced the 1.0 release of Brackets. The update introduced new features such as custom shortcut key combinations and more accurate JavaScript hinting. Brackets has a major focus on development in JavaScript, CSS and HTML. With release of version 1.0 Adobe announced a feature which extracts design information from a PSD file for convenience of coding in CSS.<ref>By Harrison Weber, VentureBeat. “Adobe launches its open source text editor Brackets out of beta, releases CSS extraction tool.” November 4, 2014. November 17, 2014.</ref> The latest version release of Brackets is 1.4.0 with new features like instant search in files and easier preferences editing.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

History

Adobe started the development of a software for web development by the name Edge Code. This was later transformed into Adobe Brackets. With the release of Brackets 1.0 Adobe announced that the development of an open source software for web development was ready and was not an experimental project anymore. Brackets contains over 282 community contributors and more than 400 requests for bug fixes and new features. Every version of Brackets have over 100,000 downloads and stands to be 16th most popular project on GitHub as on January 16th, 2015. The other more popular projects are popular frameworks and programming languages like Ruby and jQuery.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Brackets project at GitHub has had 173 branches, 83 releases and 16506 commits as on 14th September, 2015. The code is available for free for anyone who wishes to improve its features. A developer can alter features on Brackets and personalize it for one's own convenience by forking the software code.<ref>Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref></ref>

Features

Brackets provides several features<ref name="BracketsHowTo">Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref></ref> including:

• Quick Edit
• Quick Docs
• Live Preview
• JSLint
• LESS support <ref>Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref></ref>
• Theseus integration <ref>Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref></ref>
• Open source<ref>Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref> </ref>
• Extensibility

Quick Edit

Quick edit enables inline editing of CSS, Color Property, and JavaScript elements for developers. This built-in feature can be applied to multiple functions or properties simultaneously and all updates are applied directly to the file associated with the changed elements.

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Live Preview

When one clicks the respective code snippet in CSS/HTML the web browser immediately shows the output appurtenant to that code snippet in web browser. This feature is termed as Live Highlight. Also, the feature Live Preview in Brackets pushes code edits instantly to the browser to present an updated webpage as the developers modify the code. Brackets contain a Node.js backend which predicts what the code does as the developer types the code.<ref>https://www.udemy.com/brackets/</ref>

Two scenarios to Live Preview: Template:Glossary Template:Plainlist Template:Glossary end

Functionality

1. HTML & CSS real time updates (without reloading)
2. Element Highlighting: Elements selected in HTML and CSS files are highlighted within the browser.

Live preview limitations

• Currently only works with desktop Google Chrome (not open-source Chromium), as the target browser.
• Opening developer tools in Google Chrome will close all live development connections.
• All files to be viewed must be inside a currently open folder in Brackets.
• Only one HTML file can be previewed at a time.
• Real time updates are paused when syntactically invalid HTML is encountered. Brackets will resume pushing changes to the browser when the syntax is corrected.

Split View

This feature allows user to splits main view into 2 parts. User can split view either vertically or horizontally as per one's own convenience, thus allowing user to work on 2 files at same time. Thus developer can simultaneously work on two different files of two different types. Features such like Live preview, Quick edit works in both views. Currently this feature is limited such that the same file cannot be opened simultaneously in both views.

Multiple File Format Support

Brackets supports codes from multiple file types from C++, C, VBScript to java, JavaScript, HTML, Python, Perl and Ruby. The complete list comprises over 38 file types. This gives the user flexibility to work on various files of a project simultaneously.

Brackets supports a feature called "PSD lens" which helps to smoothly extract each of pictures, logos and design styles from PSD file without opening Photoshop to check for them. By calling this feature a preview Adobe conveys that there is much work ahead before this feature can be perfected. This feature brought in positive reviews from developers but many issues were reported during the initial stages of the feature release. The problem was later solved using an extension.

Theseus Integration <ref>Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref></ref>

Theseus is an open-source JavaScript debugger for Brackets that enables developers to set break points, step through code, and inspect the value of variables in real time. Theseus can be used to debug any extension in Brackets and is easily installed using the built-in extension manager. Theseus also works in conjunction with Live Preview through a proxy server that records a function and its associated values every time the function is called.

Functionality

• Displays number of times a function is called next to the function’s definition.
• Logs all arguments received, values returned, and exceptions thrown by a function call within Brackets.

Extensions <ref name="BracketsHowTo" /> <ref>Bombus<ref name="xeps-dnock">Template:Citation</ref> </ref>

Being built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, developers can provide additional functionality to Brackets by creating extensions. These extensions can be found and installed using the built-in extension manager. Extensions can also be found online via Brackets Extension Registry.

See also

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• Comparison of HTML editors

References

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External links

• Template:Official
• Template:GitHub
• Template:YouTube
• List of Brackets extensions
• Brackets Developer Forum

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