In the previous years, there have been an endless number of discussions about which text editor is best for web development.
In this article, I will provide a list of top text editors that I believe will be best for web development in 2021.
Brackets
Brackets is a modern, open-source editor with a few interesting features. It works with Adobe Creative Cloud Extract (Preview) to read design data such as colors, fonts, gradients, and more directly from a PSD file and convert it to CSS. It can also extract layers as images, use information from the PSD to define preprocessor variables, and easily get dimensions between objects. This is all possible without ever leaving the editor.
Note: Adobe Creative Cloud is a paid service. Extract (its free preview) can be directly installed alongside Brackets.
Extensions are another big plus for Brackets, which can be used to tailor the editor to the user’s needs. New extensions are released every three to four weeks. The robust support for preprocessors also merits mention.
Features such as Live Preview and Quick Edit can be used with LESS and SCSS files to streamline your work. Together with the right extensions and Adobe Creative Cloud Extract, Brackets can cover all the professional bases.
Aptana Studio 3
The current iteration of Aptana Studio (version 3) is one of the best known and most comprehensive IDEs for Windows, Mac, and Linux. In version 3, the developers wanted to resolve one of Aptana Studio’s weakest points: spotty performance.
The greatest strengths of the editor are its customizability, Git integration, and the built-in terminal. Aptana Studio 3 supports the newest web standards such as HTML5 and CSS3. It offers an integrated debugger for Ruby and JavaScript.
Non Coding Mobirise
If you just ran into this article to find HTML editors that take away the coding part from you, you’ll have found out by now that this is the wrong place. To not lose you leaving completely disappointed I want to advise you to take a look at Mobirise. Mobirise is an installable editor, too. The difference to the others mentioned here is that it does not let you fiddle with the code. Instead, it completely keeps you away from that. We have written a full-fledged article on Mobirise and I strongly encourage you to check it out.
Netbeans
Netbeans is a free and open-source IDE and it is ideal for editing existing projects or starting a project from the start. NetBeans possesses a simple drag and drop interface that also comes with a list of convenient project templates. It is most used IDE for the development of Java applications.
But you can still use Neatbeans for HTML, CSS, Javascript related work, you can also use it for PHP/C++ etc.
It is also one of the best IDE for AngularJS and do great work with KnockoutJS also.
Brackets
Brackets.io is an open-source, lightweight, yet powerful, modern text editor for developing web applications. It is founded by Adobe Systems. This tool helps you to design a website using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.
You can connect your browser in real time and check output as soon as you change code.
It also supports CSS pre-processors LESS and SASS, so you can quickly Edit and Live Highlight with your LESS and SCSS files.
RJ TextEd
RJ TextEd is a full featured text and source editor with Unicode support. It is also a very powerful web (PHP, ASP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS) development editor.
Supports:
- CSS and HTML wizards
- Highlighting of colors in CSS/SASS/LESS.
- Advanced color hint that can convert between color formats.
- Dockable panels.
- FTP and SFTP client with synchronization.
- File explorer, text clips, code explorer, project manager.
- Convert between code pages, Unicode formats and text formats.
- HTML validation, format and repair.
- Auto-completion
Eclipse
Eclipse is a free IDE for developers and programmers. It’s an open-source and community-driven IDE for Java, mainly, but It supports not only Java, but also a wide variety of programming languages like C/C++ , PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS etc.
It allows all sort of plugins for editing HTML, JavaScript, JSP, Struts, Spring, EJB, Hibernate, SQL etc
Its contributors include Google, Netflix, Facebook, GE, and Walmar, which makes this IDE one of the best for web-development.
Visual Studio: Best for C#, ASP.NET, Works good for HTML, CSS, Javascript, NodeJS, Angular etc
If you are C# or ASP.NET MVC or .NET Core developer, this is the best available option for you and Community version is free for you.
This IDE is one of the best available IDE in market, and with it’s powerful debugging feature and other useful features when added extra-plugins, makes it really great to use.
Read: Useful Visual Studio Shortcuts (comment, remove comment, Collapse code etc )
Visual Studio supports web-development, mobile, app, and game development using programming languages like ASP.NET, Python, Node.js, C++, Unity and it also supports AZure.
You can download VS Community version for free on Windows, Mac.
Komodo Edit
This IDE is easy to use and powerful. If you are working on many projects in different languages but want to use only one IDE, Komodo is probably the way to go.
It is free to use and support Auto-Complete, Calltips.https://a7e1c95e038c4d55091ecd9aeb3dff0a.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Supports:
- Multi-Language Editor
- Native Unicode support and Unicode compatibility checking
- Komodo IDE allows you to instantly track changes.
- Supports Grunt, PhoneGap, Docker, Vagrant, and many more.
Some more IDE but Cloud IDE (No need to download them, use it in browser)
JSFiddle
JSFiddle is excellent editor can be used with any Web-browser, which can show output on the fly.
It supports HTML, CSS, Javascript. You can also include code for AngularJS, Bootstrap, Knockout etc
Using it, you can easily share code with others. It also offers various JavaScript libraries, including Prototype, MooTools, YUI, and more.
CodePen
Codepen is another in-browser Editor, which can be used for coding in HTML, CSS, Javascript and other Javascript libraries.
It allows you to live view and live sync and includes features to write CSS faster.https://a7e1c95e038c4d55091ecd9aeb3dff0a.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
You can easily integrate embed code created in it in another website or share link with others.
AWS Cloud9
AWS Cloud9 is a cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE) that lets you write, run, and debug your code with just a browser.
Cloud9 comes prepackaged with essential tools for popular programming languages, including JavaScript, Python, PHP etc.
Support:
- Coding in real-time, means 2 developers can code edit the code at same time.( Yes second developer will be aware of what first developer is changing in code.)
- AWS Cloud9 makes it easy to write, run, and debug serverless applications
- Direct Terminal Access to AWS
- There is no additional charge for AWS Cloud9. If you use an Amazon EC2 instance for your AWS Cloud9 development environment, you pay only for the compute and storage resources.
HTML5 isone of the fastest growing web technologies that we know of; so much so that many web browsers are still trying to catch up with its full list of features. We still know the very early stages of web development and the capabilities of languages and browsers themselves. Anyone who has worked with s and / or programming languages will know the importance of a good editor.
Text editors are very much about usability and flexibility. We don’t want to write code in a text editor that doesn’t give us the freedom to customize and optimize our code transparently. We also don’t want to work with editors that don’t fully support the syntax of the language we use, in this case HTML5. With the introduction of HTML5, developers have invested a lot of time setting up and creating the type of text editors (for the Web) which support native HTML5 language.
We will be looking at the two WYSIWYG type text editor and editor codes that we can implement in our websites and projects and directly with HTML5 code from these text editors. You wonder if WordPress will one day advance its content editor to fully support programming languages; a definitive thought for the future.
Froala
Froala Editor is a powerful WYSIWYG rich text editor that will amaze you with its modern functionality, elegant design and reducible integration between web pages. The editor can be integrated into any type of project in no time. It only requires basic knowledge of Java and HTML programming. And it is fully supported by multiple browsers; that means Froala editor will work just as well on n ‘any appareil.
HTMLPad
Majority of editors of HTML5 text that we take a closer look at in this article are based on web technology and in themselves are content editors that simply support HTML5 markup. While HTMLPad is a full-fledged code editor that supports HTML5 markup. supports HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript functionality. At the moment, this code editor is only available for Windows users. But with enough support and demand, we can schedule a Mac version in the near future. Tools Powerful features like code optimization and inspection, code helper, and tag matching make HTMLPad a favorite among those who spend a lot of time coding in HTML5 and CSS3; front-end developers.
A built-in preview module lets you see what your code looks like in real time.saves you a ton of time from having to switch between browser and editor; HTMLPad brings the browser to the editor. And on top of that, all of your code is automatically checked against standard quality. Thus, it gives you a chance to relax by conforming to the latest JS, CSS and HTML standards.
Conclusion
Everyone knows that the web development industry is exploding, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. In fact, by 2022 there will be more than 5.5 million web developers worldwide. This means we need good text editors to create awesome websites and apps! There are two free and open source text editors for web development to begin with: Sublime Text and Atom.