Brackets vs SublimeText3: Which one to choose?

I had a fairly advanced draft on my local blog about the comparison I had been making between brackets y SublimeText3, but today I have had to change almost everything, because the few defects or lack of options that I found in brackets, they can be opaque using extensions.

brackets has caused a sensation. The fact of being an open source editor has given it a Plus compared to other alternatives, and coming from Adobe, it is not for less than at least causes curiosity.

But hey, let's get down to business. What I intend is to make a comparison between brackets y SublimeText3, I have been using the latter for some time for various reasons.

How to get braces?

Download brackets we just have to go to the download page from its official site and download a .deb. The steps of installation in Ubuntu and derivatives we already saw them here, but in the case of ArchLinux the I showed a method which has now changed a bit.

Basically now what we have to do in ArchLinux is the next:

• We download the .deb and unzip it.
• The folder is created for us brackets-sprint-29-LINUX64 which will have the file data.tar.gz indoors.
• We also unzip the file data.tar.gz and we have two folders left: opt / y usr /.
• We open a terminal and execute:

$ sudo cp -Rv opt / brackets / / opt / $ sudo cp usr / bin / brackets / usr / bin / $ sudo cp -Rv usr / share / doc / brackets / / usr / share / doc / $ sudo cp -R usr / share / applications / brackets.desktop / usr / share / applications / $ sudo cp usr / share / icons / hicolor / scalable / apps / brackets.svg / usr / share / icons / hicolor / scalable / apps /

If we had already done the installation in the way I showed you previously, we will have to execute in the terminal:

$ sudo rm -Rv /usr/lib/brackets

Now we have to modify or create the file /usr/share/applications/brackets.desktop so that it looks like this:

[Desktop Entry] Name = Brackets Type = Application Categories = Application Exec = / opt / brackets / Brackets% U Icon = brackets MimeType = text / html;

Anyway, inside the folder / opt / brackets comes the original file. That's it, we can run brackets from the Menu. If you have any problems starting it, please read the previous article on how to install Brackets in Arch Linux manually.

How to get SublimeText3?

In the case of SublimeText, we just have to go to your Official website and download the version according to our architecture. Then we unzip the downloaded file somewhere and to have SublimeText available from the Applications Menu, we create the file /usr/share/applications/sublimetext3.desktop and we put it inside:

[Desktop Entry] Version = 3.0 Type = Application Name = Sublime Text 3 GenericName = Text Editor Comment = Sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose Exec = / home / elav / Linux / Packages / Development / SublimeText3 / sublime_text% F Terminal = false MimeType = text / plain; Icon = / home / elav / Linux / Packages / Development / SublimeText3 / Icon / 256x256 / sublime-text.png Categories = TextEditor; Development; StartupNotify = true Actions = Window; Document; [Desktop Action Window] Name = New Window Exec = / home / elav / Linux / Packages / Development / SublimeText3 / sublime_text -n OnlyShowIn = Unity; [Desktop Action Document] Name = New File Exec = / home / elav / Linux / Packages / Development / SublimeText3 / sublime_text --command new_file OnlyShowIn = Unity;

Of course they have to change the route / home / elav / Linux / Packages / Development / by the folder where they have unpacked SublimeText3. Inside the Sublime folder there is also the file .desktop.

Interface

The interface of both editors is very similar. A panel on the left with the Projects and open files, a menu at the top with the editor options, although in the case of Brackets, it will appear above the editing area.

Something i like about SublimeText is Mini map that appears on the right side of the editing area, which allows us to move through the entire document easily. But as I said at the beginning, in brackets you can also thanks to the Extensions.

SublimeText It also allows us to change the appearance of the editing area thanks to a series of styles that are already included by default, as well as to establish our preferences as a user and, most important of all, our keyboard shortcuts.

And guess what? Well, the extensions of brackets that allow us to do the same:

Performance

The start of SublimeText3 is much faster than that of bracketsI'd say it's almost instantaneous. brackets it runs fast, especially since the latest version (Spring 29), but it takes a few thousandths of a second to load the project that we left open previously.

With two files open in both editors, the consumption of SublimeText is slightly higher than brackets, and it stays that way with the use of each one.

Usability

At a glance, examining each menu, we realize that SublimeText you have many more options than brackets. As I mentioned before, it gives us more keyboard shortcuts and the possibility to change and customize them by default. Both share most of them, such as commenting on a line using Ctrl + /.

SublimeText has eyelashes (Brackets does this with an extension, although it is not very polished), which makes it much easier for us to move between our files without having to go to the side panel.

But brackets It has something that I loved and it makes it very, very productive.

En brackets When we are editing an HTML file, and we want to edit the CSS code of a tag, or the JS code, we do not have to open the .css or .js file for it. We just put the cursor on the label to edit and press Ctrl + E. And look what happens:

As you can see, an area is displayed that shows us the CSS code associated with that tag. There we can edit and save it without having to open the original .css.

In addition, it will be shown in all the .css files that the style is applied to said tag and in the line where the style is applied.

Another detail that I like about SublimeText about brackets, is that when we put ourselves on an opening or closing tag, it tells us which one corresponds to it either at the end or at the beginning. SublimeText it also allows us to collapse a parent tag and its content.

Other functionality of SublimeText What I like is being able to organize the text alphabetically, very useful when we want to have our .css file well ordered.

Autocomplete

Another point in favor of brackets is auto-completion, which is much better than SublimeText for two reasons: Show a suggestion like you do bluefish and it has more auto-completion options (CSS properties and HTML tags).

Yes, brackets by default it does not close the braces {} automatically, but we solve this easily in the Menu »Edit» Automatically fill in parentheses. And ready.

Extensions

Both editors have Extensions, which can be installed relatively easily. In the case of SublimeText, there is a cool plugin called Package Control that allows us to install the rest of the extensions very easily.

The only problem that I find is that I don't know how to do it manually, that is, download the extension from the Internet in a separate file and not directly from the editor.

It's not that you can't, just that brackets it's more simple. We just have to open the Extensions Manager and we can see the ones we have installed or the ones we can install:

We can also enter to the directory de Extensions, download the .zip, unzip them and put them inside ~ / .Brackets / extensions / user /. We restart the editor and that's it.

Online edition

This functionality is excellent although I do not use it at all, so I cannot give an objective criterion about it. In theory, using Chromium + Node.js, the changes we are making in our HTML and CSS files can be automatically displayed in the browser.

Brackets will open a live connection with your local browser and it will send the changes to the CSS file as you type! That's how easy the guys from Brackets describe it.

Currently, Brackets only supports Live Development for CSS. Still, in the current version, changes to HTML and JavaScript files are automatically detected and reloaded in the browser when you save. We are currently working on adding support for Live Development of HTML and JavaScript. In addition, automatic updates are only possible in Google Chrome, but we hope to be able to bring this functionality to all major browsers soon.

Quick View

For those who have not yet memorized the color equivalences between HEX and RGB, brackets lets you see exactly what color is being used quickly and easily.

In both CSS and HTML, just hover over any color or gradient value and brackets will show a preview of it automatically.

The same goes for images: just hover over the address of an image in brackets, and it will show a thumbnail view of it.

Conclusions

Although this has only been a brief review by both editors, which then is the best?

You may have noticed that I prefer brackets, but only for the fact that it is from Open Source and the new way to edit CSS faster. But he still has a long way to go to get over SublimeText, both in functionality and stability.

The development of brackets he is very active and improves with each new version, so I have all my expectations on him. But there is no denying that SublimeText It has a long way to go and it shows with its use. I am aware that I do not use even half of the things it offers.

The fact that a license has to be paid for SublimeText no problem, it can be used without it. It is an excellent editor, possibly the best I have used so far, but everything is up to everyone's taste and choice. For now I use both, and so I am seeing the evolution of brackets, which promises a lot.