Best Free IDE for Web Development

IDEs are the weapons of developers. And for a good reason. Some of them can increase your productivity three times. Some say it’s because you can use features, such as autocomplete, which give you great productivity boosts in coding! But what does HTML stand for? How much time can it save me? Let’s dive right in and learn more about the best IDE for all programming languages.

Every programmer works with text-based source code, that’s why it’s so important to choose the best programming IDE. You should choose IDE for your computer or operating system based on the platform you want to work on.

Microsoft Visual Studio

Undoubtedly, this is the top IDE for web development and one of the best-integrated development environments, it can be used to develop pretty much everything from complex computer programs to simple websites and lightweight web apps.

This IDE uses a few of the most popular Microsoft software development platforms, such as Windows API, forms, and presentation foundation. With its help, you can produce both native and managed code.

It comes with a code editor that supports IntelliSense — a smart code completion tool that provides intelligent code suggestions to allow developers to quickly complete the code. What’s more, its integrated debugger can debug both the source-level and machine-level code.

Apart from this, the Visual Studio includes a code profiler, designer for building GUI applications, web designer, and class designer. You can also expand its functionality by adding various plugins ranging from source control systems to toolsets like editors and visual designers.

In all, it supports 36 distinct programming languages. With its flexibility and ease of use, it is certainly one of the best-integrated development environments available out there on the internet.

Sublime Text

Written by a Google engineer, named Jon Skinner, Sublime Text is a cross-platform IDE established in Python and C++.  This best editor for python on Windows has elementary inbuilt support for Python.

Sublime text is rapid and you can modify this editor as per your requirement to form a complete development ecosystem. You can set up packages for auto-completion, debugging, and code printing.

It is built in such a way that it supports numerous other mark-up and programming languages. The code editor permits users to add supplementary functions with the assistance of plugins. 

Sublime Text is the best free Python IDE. Some features offered by the IDE are:

  • ‘Command palette’ utilizes adaptive matching for rapid keyboard invocation of random instructions
  • A multi-language editor supporting various programming languages
  • Go to anything, symbols, quick navigation to files
  • Python oriented plugin API
  • Simultaneously make the identical interactive alterations to manifold selected areas
  • Wide-ranging customization via JSON setting files, comprising platform-specific and project-specific settings
  • Project-related preferences
  • Well-matched with various language grammars from TextMate
  • Cross-platform (macOS, Windows, and Linux) and supportive plug-ins for these cross-platform

Atom by GitHub

A free and open-source text editor, Atom is a desktop application developed using web technologies. It offers support for Node.js plugins and comes with Git Control, built by GitHub.

Atom, a code editor for web development is written in CoffeeScript and Less and is based on Electron — a framework enabling cross-platform desktop apps using Chromium and Node.js. It was first released in June 2015 and is fully customizable in HTML, CSS, and JS.

Atom by GitHub

Atom comes with a built-in package manager to allow you to install new tools and themes for expanding its functionality. That’s not all, out-of-the-box Atom offers several pre-installed themes and works across various operating systems.

Eclipse

Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) generally intended for the Java language. Owing to its system of extensions or plugins, it can be utilized with other languages, comprising PHP and C/C++.  

Pydev is a great plugin that permits Eclipse to be utilized as a Python IDE that supports IronPython and Jython. Pydev employs progressive inference techniques to supply elements like code analysis and code completion.  

Pydev is an independent, free Python IDE that endorses exceptional integrity with the Eclipse universe. Python development has become equivalent to Java development on Eclipse, creating the experience much more impressively. 

The major emphasis of this online Python IDE is on debugging in the graphical pattern, analysis of code, and refactoring of python code. 

Eclipse PyDev is stable and offers decent performance for the Python project life cycle. Below listed are some of its vital features: 

  • Code completion and code folding with auto-import
  • Pydev supports Unittest, PyLint and Django integration
  • Permits you to make Google App Engine (GAE) Python project
  • Collaborating console
  • Remote debugger and highlighting syntax and keywords

Brackets

Brackets

Brackets is created by Adobe. This lightweight and fast JS editor offer built-in support for JavaScript. Brackets are available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Function finding and quick project switching are some notable features it offers. With the help of these features, the users can search for different project files while typing in real-time. The Extract feature converts details from PSD into CSS.

Note: On September 1, 2021, Adobe will end support for Brackets. If you would like to continue using, maintaining, and improving Brackets, you may fork the project on GitHub. Through Adobe’s partnership with Microsoft, we encourage users to migrate to Visual Studio Code, Microsoft’s free code editor built on open source.

Features:

  • Inline editors.
  • Live Preview — allows you to get a real-time connection to your browser; whenever you make a change, you immediately see the changes on the screen.
  • Preprocessor Support — This allows you to use Quick Edit and Live Highlight LESS and SCSS files.
  • A set of visual tools.
  • Preprocessor support.

Pros:

  • Simple User-Interface
  • Code Minification
  • Live Browser Preview

Cons:

  • High Launch Time
  • Difficult Project Management
  • Low Performance while working with large files

WebStorm

JetBrains (the name behind ReSharper, TeamCity, IntelliJ IDEA, and more), built WebStorm specifically for JavaScript development — front-end and Node.js. 

While a monthly or yearly subscription is required, it provides you with a lot of advanced features. These include coding assistance in the vein of ReSharper — a game changer if you’ve never used it — for popular frameworks like React, Angular, and Node.js.

Features

  • Coding assistance for popular JavaScript frameworks
  • Built-in version control
  • Debugging support
  • Integrated unit testing tools 
  • User interfaces for common command-line tools
  • Support for plugins

Pros

  • Lots of tools that make development easier
  • Customizable 
  • Similar to other JetBrains IDEs, common experience
  • Cross-platform

Cons

  • Subscription needed for most use cases

Cost

  • Free for students and open source projects
  • Monthly subscription (price varies between individuals and teams)

PyCharm

Built for Python, today PyCharm also supports many other popular programming languages. Developed by JetBrains, this cross-platform web development IDE provides code analysis, a graphical debugger, and an integrated unit tester to minimize the hassles of web developers.

While PyCharm is commercial software, it also has a community edition with a limited set of features. Today, it is mostly used for professional web development projects – thanks to its comprehensive coding assistance and highly customizable command-line interface.

However, according to some, the free version of PyCharm possibly be buggy, especially the autocomplete feature.

PyCharm

With its intelligent features, PyCharm can automatically complete the code and prevent errors. You can also integrate it with Git and Mercurial – which is again an added advantage. Moreover, it comes with an integrated Python debugger and unit testing with line-by-line code coverage. Thus, if you are building cross-platform technology projects, PyCharm can be ideal for you.

Conclusion:

Many programming beginners are looking for an IDE. Best IDE is a must have software for coding, to help beginners master best coding skills, advanced developers building the best app/website. IntelliJ IDEA is top rated IDE among all software engineers, the most common IDE used today.

1 thought on “Best Free IDE for Web Development”

Leave a Comment