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Adobe Brackets


Brackets is officially launching today, but I have clearance from Adobe to feel free to start talking about it now.
Brackets is an open source code editor for the web from Adobe. It is a web platform technology that is pushing tools for developers and was built using JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

So, what makes Brackets different from other web code editors?

  • Tools shouldn’t get in your way. Instead of cluttering up your coding environment with lots of panels and icons, the Quick Edit UI in Brackets puts context-specific code and tools inline.
  • Brackets is in sync with your browser. With Live Development, Brackets works directly with your browser to push code edits instantly, set breakpoints, and jump back and forth between your real source code and the browser view.
  • Do it yourself. Because Brackets is open source, and built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript, you can help build the best code editor for the web.

You can see some screenshots of Brackets on the wiki.

Brackets is very early in development, so many of the features you would expect in a code editor are missing, and some existing features might be incomplete or not as useful as you’d want. But if you like the direction it’s going, please contribute!

Brackets isn’t ready for general use yet. It’s still very early in development, is missing a lot of basic editor features, and probably has bugs. That said, we’ve actually been using Brackets to develop Brackets for awhile now, so what’s there is reasonably stable.

Although Brackets is built in HTML/CSS/JS, it currently runs as a desktop application in a thin native shell, so that it can access your local files. (If you just try to open the index.html file in a browser, it won’t work yet.) The native shell for Brackets lives in a separate repo, adobe/brackets-app, which includes this repo as a submodule.

The Brackets native shell currently runs on Mac and Windows. Since it’s based on CEF/Chromium, it could be ported to Linux relatively easily, but that work hasn’t been done yet. Stay tuned.

You can download “stable” builds of Brackets from the downloads page. If you want to pull the repos directly via git, see How to Use Brackets for instructions on how to get everything. Either way, you can launch Brackets from the bin/win or bin/mac folder.

By default, Brackets shows its own source code (MIND BLOWN). You can choose a different folder to edit from File > Open Folder.

Most of Brackets should be pretty self-explanatory, but for information on how to use its unique features, like Quick Edit and Live Development, please read How to Use Brackets. Also, see the release notes for a list of new features and known issues in each build.

  • General Info/Experimental Builds
  • Adobe Connect Update presentation on Brackets: In this session the Product Manager for Brackets, Adam Lehman, will provide an update on the open source project and preview future announcements. You can read more and download experimental builds of Brackets on github. http://github.com/adobe/brackets
  • YouTube initial presentation on Brackets: Presented by Adam Lehmam, from Adobe.
  • Guidelines: This is an initial draft of the Extension UI Guidelines. They are designed to meet the current understood needs of purposed extensions. The Brackets team is open to any suggestions on features that may have been overlooked.
  • Twitter: @brackets