4 of the best free text editors to code in for web developers
There are plenty of code editors out there that you can use to code a website or edit HTML, CSS, PHP or Javascript.
All of them have different features where some are good and some are bad. Some editors are free and some are paid for but I will discuss the free text editors today.
Sublime Text 3
Sublime Text 3 is probably one of the most used text editors. Almost all of the developers that I know have used it and it has many cool features. In Sublime Text you can install plenty of cool packages to enhance the editor and to add shortcuts to make your daily life easier. Some if the cool things that you can do with Sublime Text are:
- Sublime Linter
- HTML-CSS-JS Prettify
- All Autocomplete
- Emmet
- LESS syntax highlighting
- Sass syntax highlighting
You can also install awesome themes for Sublime Text 3 like the Materialize theme which you can get here to make your editor look like a piece of art.
Atom IO
Atom is a text editor that’s modern, approachable, yet hackable to the core—a tool you can customize to do anything but also use productively without ever touching a config file.
Atom comes full featured out of the box with the following features:
- Cross-platform editing
- Built-in package manager
- Smart autocompletion
- File system browser
- Multiple panes
- Find and replace
Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free (as in “free speech” and also as in “free beer”) source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages and runs in the MS Windows environment.
Based on the powerful editing component Scintilla, Notepad++ is written in C++ and uses pure Win32 API and STL which ensures a higher execution speed and smaller program size. By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness, Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption, resulting in a greener environment.
Some cool features that come with Notepad++ is:
- Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
- User Defined Syntax Highlighting and Folding: screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3 and screenshot 4
- PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) Search/Replace
- GUI entirely customizable: minimalist, tab with close button, multi-line tab, vertical tab and vertical document list
- Document Map
- Auto-completion: Word completion, Function completion and Function parameters hint
- Multi-Document (Tab interface)
- Multi-View
- WYSIWYG (Printing)
- Zoom in and zoom out
- Multi-Language environment supported
- Bookmark
- Macro recording and playback
- Launch with different arguments
TextMate – Mac only
TextMate brings Apple’s approach to operating systems into the world of text editors. By bridging UNIX underpinnings and GUI, TextMate cherry-picks the best of both worlds to the benefit of expert scripters and novice users alike.
Whether you are a programmer or a designer, the production of code and markup is hard work. Without an editor dedicated to the task, it is also often cumbersome, overwhelming, and repetitive.
Awesome features that comes with TextMate are:
- Ability to Search and Replace in a Project
- Auto-Indent for Common Actions Like Pasting Text
- Auto-Pairing of Brackets and Other Characters
- Clipboard History
- Column Selections and Column Typing
- Completion of Words from Current Document
- CSS-like Selectors to Pinpoint the Scope of Actions and Settings
- Declarative Language Grammars for Graceful Mixing and Hacking
- Dynamic Outline for Working With Multiple Files
- Expand Trigger Words to Code Blocks With Tab-able Placeholders
- File Tabs when Working With Projects
- Foldable Code Blocks
- Function Pop-up for Quick Overview and Navigation
- Plug-able Through Your Favorite Scripting Language
- Recordable Macros With No Programming Required
- Regular Expression Search and Replace (grep)
- Run Shell Commands from Within a Document
- Support for Darcs, Perforce, SVK, and Subversion
- Support for More Than 50 Languages
- Switch Between Files in Projects With a Minimum of Key Strokes
- Themable Syntax Highlight Colors
- Visual Bookmarks to Jump Between Places in a File
- Works As External Editor for (s)ftp Programs
- Works Together With Xcode and Can Build Xcode Projects
