Text and HTML Editors

Text editors are programs used to create and edit plain text files. They are fast and easy to use. They usually provide many features: undo and redo the last edit (who can live without it?), basic editing and formatting features (cut, copy, and paste, search and replace), syntax highlighting, etc.

What are the best editors out there?

• Notepad++ is a free editor. It runs on MS Windows. It is a fast, lightweight, and yet very powerful and flexible editor with tons of outstanding features: search/replace; syntax highlighting with support for different languages, such as C+, C++, HTML, Java, JavaScript, PHP, etc.; multi-document (tab interface), line numbering (Settings, Preferences…, Editing, Display line number), zoom in and out (press and hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard, then scroll wheel up or down or, alternatively, press Ctrl + “+” to zoom in, Ctrl + “-” to zoom out), etc.

• Visual Studio Code is a free, lightweight, and powerful source code editor developed by Microsoft. It comes with the IntelliSense feature. “IntelliSense is a general term for a variety of code editing features including: code completion, parameter info, quick info, and member lists. IntelliSense features are sometimes called by other names such as code completion, content assist, and code hinting.” It is highly extensible and customizable with its huge library of extensions.

• Sublime Text and Atom

  Sublime Text is “a sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose.” However, it is not free and you must buy a license to use it.

First, let’s configure it. We need to install a full-featured package manager. Tools -> Install Package Manager.

Then, you may want to install some of the following packages (CTRL-Windows-/CMD-Mac- + SHIFT + P, Install-Package):

1. SideBar Enhancements. Enhancements for Sublime Text sidebar.
2. Emmet (ex-Zen Coding) is an editor plugin for high-speed HTML, XML coding and editing.
3. Themes. Material, Soda and Phoenix.
4. Sublime Linter. Linting is the process of running a program that analyzes your code and flags a wide variety of issues and errors.
5. SublimeCodeIntel. Full-featured code intelligence and smart autocomplete engine.
6. ViewInBrowser. This will open whatever is in your current view/tab.
7. LiveReload. This helps you to test your code very quickly, as soon as you save a file on Sublime, your browser updates automatically.

Sublime’s look and feel is configured in Preferences.sublime-settings (Preferences > Settings—User). I use the following settings:

"theme": "Soda Dark.sublime-theme",
"dictionary": "Packages/Language - English/en_GB.dic",
"font_face": "Ubuntu Mono",
"font_size": 16,
"ignored_packages":
[
      "Vintage"
],
"spell_check": true,

  Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st Century. It is completely free, open-source, and it looks very much like Sublime Text.