Adobe Dreamweaver vs. Brackets

One of the issues I've had is our company newsletter. I use MailChimp to send it but the template I chose does not work well in MailChimp. My work-around is that I host the template in Adobe Dreamweaver and then code the new newsletter content in the tool. This allows me to choose the "Code Your Own" option in MailChimp. I simply paste in the code, make any tweaks, and then I can send it to my subscribers.

Incentivized

When I'm designing a specific page, I can line up all the folders and files in the left File Tree panel. This keeps me organized and able to find things as I need them. Once I'm organized, I'm ready to start coding. Brackets allows you to control quite a bit of your environment, which contributes to your efficiency at coding in an effort free environment. One of the standard features of the color coding of tags really makes a difference. As I'm reviewing the code, generally I can quickly notice a missing </> or some other typo. Plus the color coding often helps you quickly find a particular line you need. And speaking of color, when you hover over a hexadecimal value in the code, a box pops up showing you the color of that code. This is particularly helpful when you have multiple colors and you want to make sure that your CSS is spot on.

Incentivized

• Real time preview of designs with split code view.
• Easily preview designs in a number of browsers.
• Code hinting.
• Real time error detection.
• Validation reports.

Incentivized

• Editing CSS classes are done particularly well. It’s very simple and straightforward. Brackets will throw errors while editing so you know where you may have made a wrong turn. Very helpful
• The simple UI is refreshing. Often times code editors throw too much on the screen. Brackets keeps it simple and it’s appreciated!

Incentivized

• Space - you have to download the software on your hard drive
• Cost - It's a monthly subscription and not open source
• RAM - You need enough RAM to run Adobe products, and if you don't have enough it will crash and you can lose hours of work.

• As it is a javascript based program it can have some performance issues, especially with larger files (too large and it can't even open them).
• Themes are limited to the editor area, but it would be nice to be able to customize the file-tree and gutter areas.
• And the smallest quibble of all, make the open files area resizable. It's a little annoying to have to scroll up and down when you have plenty of screen space to see all the open files.

Incentivized

Adobe Dreamweaver is very useable and easy to navigate. It's features are fantastic and documentation on how to use the software is very detailed. If you can't find how to do something, the help file is fantastic and works great!

Incentivized

As far as usability, text editors are about as simple as you can get in the GUI world. The little features that make Brackets unique are intuitive enough that you don't really need a manual to find them and come to rely on them. If anybody knows enough about coding and markup enough to be looking for different editors, they will be up to speed before the download finishes.

Incentivized

Brackets has a very extensive support site. Everything is organized nicely for easy navigation. If you can't find an answer you can easily file an issue with them and they will be quick to respond. What's cool is you can also message them on Slack, if you request an invite first. Slack is a very popular program right now so it's great having that integration.

Incentivized

I used FrontPage many years ago and believe it is now obsolete. It was never a good program, but Dreamweaver is superior and has always been my go-to choice.

Incentivized

Atom is very similar to Brackets as it is a javascript based editor. I haven't used it as much, I tried it briefly when I was having an annoying bug in Brackets. It has a very rich ecosystem of plugins. Some of my learned behaviors and tools from Brackets were missing. I'm sure there were third-party plugins to match it, but I never got the chance to dig into it. Sublime Text is actually my other daily work horse and it compliments Brackets well. It is a compiled, native application. As such I can open the massive csv files (millions of rows) that Brackets just can't. They won't replace each other and they work well together.

Incentivized

• It is very easy to use so we can fast write the code
• User workspace and features are very good so we can do quality work
• Sometimes when open the file directly from server, it hangs

Incentivized

• Since this is an open-source tool, the ROI is very high. Anything it produces has a huge return on such a small investment of time learning to use the tool.
• I was able to use this to augment the lackluster web development editor used by Eclipse. I use Brackets for the view, Eclipse for the server logic and server plugin.
• The amount of convenient open-source plugins have improved productivity (minification, formatting, beautification).

Incentivized