Brackets is an open-source editor written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with a primary focus on web development. It was created by Adobe Systems, licensed under the MIT License, and is currently maintained on GitHub by Adobe and other open-sourced developers. Brackets is available for cross-platform download on Mac, Windows, and is compatible with most linux distros. The main purpose of brackets is it’s live html, css and js editing functionality. On November 4, 2014, Adobe announced the first (1.0) release of Brackets. The update introduced new features such as custom shortcut key combinations and more accurate JavaScript hinting. Brackets has a major focus on JavaScript, CSS and HTML. With release of version 1.0 Adobe has a feature that extracts design information from a PSD file for convenience of coding in CSS. As of June 28, 2016, the feature is officially discontinued, due to “low usage”. However, Extract is still available via Photoshop and Dreamweaver, both of which are part of their paid service, Adobe Creative Cloud. The latest version release of Brackets is 1.12.
Adobe first started development of a text editor for web development on Edge Code, which was discontinued as of November 2014. This was later turned into Adobe Brackets. With the release of Brackets 1.0, Adobe has announced that the development of an open source software is no longer an experimental project. Brackets contains more than 400 requests for bug fixes and new features. Every version of Brackets has more than 100,000 downloads and is currently at the top of the list of GitHubs as of January 16, 2015. The Brackets repository on GitHub (Bracket repository) currently has 150 branches, 108 releases and 17,692 commits as of 5 June 2018 The source code is available under the MIT license.
Brackets provides several features:
CSS, Color Property, and JavaScript elements for developers. This built-in feature can be applied to multiple functions or properties simultaneously.
When one clicks the respective code snippet in CSS / HTML This feature is termed as Live Highlight. Also, the feature Live Preview in Brackets pushes code edits instantaneously to the browser to present an updated webpage. Brackets contains a Node.js backend that predicts what the code does for the developer types the code. Two scenarios to Live Preview: No [[Front and back ends]
This feature splits the main view into two parts. Users can split the view either vertically or horizontally according to their own convenience, thus allowing users to work on two files at the same time. A different type of file, two files of the same type, or even two different parts of the same file at the same time. Features such as Live Preview and Quick Edit work in both views.
Brackets supports codes from multiple file types from C ++, C, VBScript to Java, JavaScript, HTML, Python, Perl, and Ruby. The complete list includes more than 38 file types. This gives the user flexibility to work on various files of a project simultaneously. Brackets support a feature called “PSD lens” that helps to smoothly extract each of pictures, logos and design styles from PSD file to open Photoshop to check for them. By calling this feature a preview Adobe conveys that there is much work ahead of this feature can be perfected. This feature has been reported in the original stages of the feature release. The problem was later solved using an extension.
Brackets integrates Theseus, an open-source JavaScript debugger that allows developers to set break points, step through code, and inspect the value of variables in real time. Theseus can be used to debug any extension in Brackets and is easily installed using the built-in extension manager. Theseus also works in conjunction with Live Prerequisite
Being built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, developers can provide additional functionality to Brackets by creating extensions. These extensions can be found and installed using the built-in extension manager. Extensions can also be found online via Brackets Extension Registry.