Best Dev Environment for Front End Work?

radderfire · 12 Jul 2016 at 15:42

Hi Guys

What is the best dev environment for front end work? I have the Dreamweaver CC, but was wondering if there is anything better?

Thanks

GravyMonster · 12 Jul 2016 at 16:04

All you really need for frontend work is syntax highlighting, so I just use Notepad++, or Visual Studio when it's part of a larger project.

gummi32 · 12 Jul 2016 at 16:20

I use Atom personally but you might want to give Brackets a look into as it is designed primarily for front end web development.

http://brackets.io/

roccles · 12 Jul 2016 at 16:48

A lot is down to personal preference so might be worth trying a few and see which one you like.

These are worth a look.

Webstorm - Paid
Sublime Text - Paid
Visual Studio Code - Free
Brackets - Free
Atom - Free

radderfire · 12 Jul 2016 at 19:05

One thing that annoys me about Dreamweaver is that it is incapable of displaying the code as you would see it in the browser.

Mynight · 12 Jul 2016 at 19:32

radderfire said:
One thing that annoys me about Dreamweaver is that it is incapable of displaying the code as you would see it in the browser.

As in the WYSIWYG editor?

I love using it but can't understand why they haven't just implemented Webkit, Gecko, Trident, Blink and allow live switching between them.

dacads · 12 Jul 2016 at 21:21

Brackets and Atom certainly look more modern than notepad++! (which is what I use)

dante671 · 12 Jul 2016 at 21:23

Personally I like to just use Visual Studio 2015, though I also do a lot of development for desktop.

I hear lots of good things about Visual Studio Code which is essentially a cut down version of VS aimed more towards web development,it gives syntax highlighting, intellisense, Git support etc. Notepad++ is also a good option.

Scotty123 · 12 Jul 2016 at 21:48

Another vote for Visual Studio Code from me.

Poolybit · 13 Jul 2016 at 08:53

I've moved to Visual Studio Code from Atom / Notepad++ and it's pretty good so far. I use Visual Studio for major projects but Code is working well for everything else.

I guess it depends on what features you are looking for, there is a large number of extensions that add additional functionality to visual studio code but it won't give you WYSIWYG functionality. It does have good git integration, syntax highlighting and intellisense though!

Dup · 13 Jul 2016 at 13:39

Atom + Plugins
Gulp for preprocessing and uploading etc

chance2228 · 13 Jul 2016 at 14:14

Personally am a big fan of VS2015 (paid), it's just a nice and intuitive IDE. But Sublime Text is also very good with an unlimited amount of plugins and is somewhat free.

bscott · 16 Jul 2016 at 13:59

I like the JetBrains tools so for front end development I would pick WebStorm.

Scotty123 · 16 Jul 2016 at 21:50

Yeah JetBrains make great IDEs. Forgot about Webstorm. It is good if you want an IDE rather than just a text editor for front-end development.

Etheco · 18 Jul 2016 at 16:10

I Love Atom, But then I write all my frontend code and just refresh the browser where it will show you a "correct" preview.

I always found things like Dreamweaver add in so much bloat code that just made stuff act oddly, Then this was many many years ago.

meandu229 · 18 Jul 2016 at 16:16

gummi32 said:
I use Atom personally but you might want to give Brackets a look into as it is designed primarily for front end web development.

http://brackets.io/

+1 for brackets its pretty nice with live updates when you change stuff.

mid_gen · 21 Jul 2016 at 09:10

Scotty123 said:
Another vote for Visual Studio Code from me.

+1 from me. Had to do some JS/Angular stuff recently and started using VS Code, nice little editor.

topbanana · 21 Jul 2016 at 13:07

Visual Studio Code

McBain · 21 Jul 2016 at 22:06

Sublime text.

bcjames · 23 Jul 2016 at 08:17

I use PHP Storm for most of the projects I work on, Sublime for little things. For the rest of the env, I use homestead for the bigger projects where I need to match the production sever, or MAMP and CodeKit for the day to day stuff.