Sublime Text 3
Being programmers, we all use a particular Source code editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for coding and building software. Sublime Text is one such editor used extensively by website designers and developers. The latest version, Sublime Text 3 comes with such great features, interface and programming support which actually makes the users fall in love with it, as claimed by its creators! This makes Sublime, one of the best code editors out there. Being cross-platform, Sublime Text editor is available for all major OS platforms: Windows, Linux, and MacOS, having support for a number of programming languages, scripting languages, markup languages, style sheet languages, and query languages.
Sublime Text Plugins
Though Sublime is already loaded with nearly all the excellent features and functionalities that one would desire from a modern and advance source code editor, yet there is a lot more that can be added to it from the user side. These are called sublime plugins or sublime extensions. These small tools have the power to improve the efficiency, convenience, speed and accuracy of the coding work on Sublime. There are over hundreds of such sublime packages for web development available to install and use, yet only a handful fall into the category of the most handy!
Below is the list of the 7 best Sublime Plugins to check out:
1. Package Control
Package Control is the foremost, i.e. the first and the most significant plugin you need to install. Package Control is the all-inclusive package manager for Sublime Text with which you can easily find, install, remove, manage and update all your other sublime text plugins. Hence, you don't need to repeat the cycle of downloading files and copying them to the packages' directory for each package or plugin you wish to install! Instead, Package Control makes that work simpler for you, and even helps you to keep your sublime packages up-to-date automatically! For Mac OS, use Command(⌘) + Shift(⇧) + P, and Ctrl + Shift(⇧) + P for Windows and Ubuntu to open the command palette and then type in the command for the required action, for example, Install Package or Remove Package.
2. Emmet
Emmet is an awesome tool which helps you considerably save your time and efforts. All you need to do is to abbreviate your HTML & CSS code in a simple format of shortcuts and Emmet automatically transforms(expands) it into valid HTML tags and CSS properties! Actually awesome, isn't it? Emmet lets you write less, yet produce more. Emmet is also available for other code editors such as Atom, Eclipse, Notepad++, and others.
3. AllAutocomplete
While searching for chunks of code or any other sort of stuff from the files open on Sublime Text, AllAutocomplete acts as a handy tool. By default, Sublime Text 3 search only considers the text on the current file, but AllAutocomplete goes one step ahead for you by searching for the terms across all the files open at the moment. This helps you save the tedious effort of going over to each open file and repeating the search commands over and over again.
4. Terminal
Terminal is a great plugin for Sublime Text 3. With this tool, you can directly open the terminal at the current file, or alternatively at the current root project folder from the Sublime Text using a hotkey. For Mac OS X, the shortcut keys are Command(⌘) + Shift(⇧) + T and for Windows and Linux, the shortcut keys are Ctrl + Shift(⇧) + T.
5. ColorPicker
Do you still need to switch to Adobe Photoshop, GIMP(GNU Image Manipulation Program), or your web browser to choose a color gradient every now and then? With ColorPicker, you simply don't need to anymore! Just use the hotkeys Command(⌘) + Shift(⇧) + C for Mac OS X and Ctrl + Shift(⇧) + C for Windows and Ubuntu to use the ColorPicker function within Sublime Text.
6. DocBlockr
If you take coding guidelines seriously by using the proper documentation and annotations, then DocBlockr is here to encourage you for that! It automatically inserts some comment templates for functions, variables, etc. which you can edit and organize. By doing so, it makes the task of adding comments and annotations within the code, a quicker process.
7. ColorHighlighter
ColorHighlighter is another useful Sublime Text 3 plugin for web designers. As its name indicates, ColorHighlighter highlights the color value with its color gradient as the cursor is placed over it. This plugin supports many color codes including hexadecimal (HEX), RGB, and HSL values. What's more- it even works for LESS and SASS color variables!
Now that you understand how these top Sublime Plugins work, it's time to make a move, i.e. to install them and to actually bring them to use. There are several other important Sublime Text packages as well, including Git Packages which would be discussed in a separate blog. The experts at the W3villa team are themselves involved in developing some great plugins for Sublime Text 3. One such plugin is Sync-Snip which was developed at the Second Hackathon event conducted in September 2017 at W3villa Technologies. The discussion of these useful Sublime Plugins were also a topic for one of the regular presentations held by the W3villa team. We hope that you have found this article useful and would like to share it with your friends to help them too!
Also, read our another recent blog post related to Sublime Text: 35+ Quick (and Important) Sublime Shortcut Keys.
