edit: I see that this is also powered by codemirror, the editor itself, so what does this offer on top of it?

I can't even find a feature list on this page, and after signing up for the adobe ~cloud~ I haven't been able to make my way to a working demo of the application...

https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Brackets-Screenshots

A quick off-the-cuff comparison, not being familiar with all of these tools, I'm sure others will jump in and correct/clarify:

CodeMirror - this is for embedding in pages only, and has no way of editing files etc, so you'd need to use a wrapper like:

CodeMirrorUI - a wrapper using the API to add some editor-like functionality, but it's still not a standalone editor app.

Light Table requires Java, and is focussed on Clojure (and JS?) right now, so although the ideas and interface have been borrowed from in Brackets, it's not really in the same space right now, and is likely to diverge as time passes.

Jsbin - this is probably the closest in feel to the Adobe offering, though it runs in a browser, not as a local app. That rules it out for me.

So this is more like TextMate based on CodeMirror - it could be used as a replacement for another editor like Dreamweaver, Coda, Textmate etc, and while the focus is on html/css/js, it'd be nice to see them expand that eventually to other domains. I suspect though they'll keep it tightly focussed on html, css and js.

It's worth downloading the demos here to try it out:

https://github.com/adobe/brackets/downloads

This looks like a really interesting new direction from Adobe, and an attempt to get back a bit of mindshare in a market where currently they are seen as a stodgy old dinosaur with products like Adobe® Dreamweaver®™. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it as TextMate user currently, however I'd need support for other languages. Having had a little play with the download, I can say it's really not ready for primetime (only live edit of css is working right now, not even html edits), but what you can see looks really impressive, the UI is clean and works well, and if they have the language coverage of CodeMirror that would be really interesting (if not it'll still be useful, but could not replace TextMate for me for example). This might be worth a look in a few months when they have it all working properly.

CodeMirror is a JavaScript component that provides a code editor in the browser.

NB this does not mean editing files in a filesystem but editing code in a browser (which could then be saved to a db or files by a web app/desktop app). Obviously it's possible to write such an app (like brackets), based on codemirror.

I'd be really interested in a codemirror which did manipulate source code files directly (and was not limited to html,css and js), but got the impression from their website that they offer lots of in-browser editing, but not an app which lets you interact with a local file system and edit files.

Did I get that wrong? If so would love to know more (or any other corrections you'd care to add).

I mean, you're right in that it can't write to the FS, but that's a HTML limitation... you juts need a shim in webkit container to do this, or you could use filepicker.io or similar techniques.

As you say, in theory at least not too hard to wrap in WebKit, but I have a feeling it might be more work than it first appears, and am too busy right now to attempt it and was hoping someone else had. Maybe one day. Thanks for elaborating.

But it will still use a "shim" of sorts. It will basically sync via d-p-m and websockets to a server that will do the saving/building/running and then return the output.

Here's the Chromium bug: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=129539

And a related discussion thread: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-c...

Other considerations - pretty much any front-end person that isn't a masochist is going to be using a preprocessor like SASS or LESS - how will the editor support this? (also consider CoffeeScript, for instance).

No linux version :(

> will you release your editor's source code

it is already open source

currently there is no comparable desktop project using ace but maybe there will be something soon http://www.indiegogo.com/happyedit

I think this is what a lot of us missed. As webdesign is moving away from wysiwyg we need a new breed of text editors (I love Emacs but it's not very efficient for CSS/HTML/JS development).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3917637

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4159552

The powerful thing about Brackets is that extensions (and the rest of Brackets in fact) are written in JavaScript, so basically every Brackets user has all the skills necessary to write an extension and customize their development environment.

We don't have an easy way to customize key bindings yet, but it's on our backlog: https://trello.com/card/keyboard-shortcuts-stored-in-json-fo... https://trello.com/card/keyboard-shortcut-customization-inte...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tk7AUaExBQ&feature=plcp

This is Adobe's branded preview with their extensions, and just2n has supplied the Brackets builds.

Has builds for OSX and Windows.

"FOR THE WEB, BY THE WEB"

"Brackets is built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you can code in Brackets, you can code on Brackets."

"WORKS WITH YOUR BROWSER"

Spent 5 seconds skimming the page up and down for a "Try It" or "Get Started" link, but only found "Check It Out". After 3 seconds of reading, I re-interpreted "Check-Out" as in the source code sense. Re-scanned the page, no other obvious demo headings, so I closed the tab.

Despite the page's high level of visual polish, it completely failed at explaining to me what the app was and how I should go about getting it.

Obviously, both these experiences are quite different and both would lead someone to make a certain conclusion about the website. Which is 'correct' then?

Personally, I just hope some of the neat features (Inline CSS editing) appears in Sublime Text 2.

=Ryan [email protected]