Brackets is a free, open source code editor focused on front-end web development (HTML, CSS and JavaScript).
The application, which was originally developed by Adobe, is available for Linux, Windows and MacOS.
Since I haven’t written about Brackets in a while, here’s a quick list of its main features:
- live preview: see your changes in real time in a web browser (by default, this only supports Google Chrome, but there’s also experimental support for other browsers – you can enable it from the Brackets File menu);
- inline editor: simply put your mouse cursor on a CSS ID, press Ctrl + E and Brackets displays the CSS selectors inline;
- supports extensions and comes with a built-in extension manager, with hundreds of themes and extensions available to install.
Changes in Brackets 1.9 include:
- reverse inspect in Live Preview (clicking an element in Live Preview highlights the corresponding tag in the source code);
- the application now supports “Replace All” in Find & Replace along with batch operation;
- the Extension Manager now displays the download count for listed extension, and it allows sorting based on download count or published date. Thanks to this, you can easily find the most popular and the latest extensions;
- focus can now be swapped between panes using a keyboard shortcut (Alt + w);
- language mode can now be changed for untitled documents (and code coloringand code hints are now supported for such documents);
- GitHub organizations can now own Brackets extensions and update them.
A complete changelog is available HERE.
Important! There are two issues with Brackets on Linux.
The first is that to close the application, you must click the close button twice.
And the second issue is that the official Brackets Debian / Ubuntu debs depend on libgcrypt11, which is not available in Ubuntu versions newer than 14.10.
This last issue is fixed if you install libgcrypt11 from an older Ubuntu version, if you upgraded from Ubuntu versions older than 15.04 (so libgcrypt11 is still installed on your system), or if use the WebUpd8 Brackets PPA (there are also direct PPA deb download links below), which should work in any Debian-based Linux distribution, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint and so on.
For more about Brackets, check out its website and wiki.
Download Brackets
Download Brackets (32bit and 64bit debs – only work with Ubuntu 14.10 or older unless you install libgcrypt11 manually or use the PPA -, MacOS and Windows binaries)
To install the latest Brackets in Ubuntu 17.04, 16.10, 16.04 or 14.04 / Linux Mint 18.x or 17.x / Debian 8+ (see how to add a PPA in Debian HERE) by using the WebUpd8 Brackets PPA, run the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/brackets
sudo apt update
sudo apt install bracketsAlternatively, download the WebUpd8 Brackets PPA debs from HERE.
Fedora users can install Brackets by using an unofficial copr repository (not yet updated to version 1.9 at the time I’m posting this article).
Arch Linux users can install Brackets from AUR (not yet updated to version 1.9 at the time I’m posting this article).
Originally published at WebUpd8: Daily Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.
