This is the fourth instalment in our search for a solid Windows Code Editor. You can find the other parts listed at the end of the post. While this editor wasn’t in my first list of editors to review it was suggested in the comments and I’m glad it was.
The Good
Sublime has awesome keyboard navigation. Want to divide the project window vertically and show two files, how about horizontally and show two files? Neither of those items is hard just hover over the buttons from the navigation menu and the keyboard commands will show.
Not something that I was originally looking for but the mini-map provided by Sublime is a great little feature. The min-map shows up on the left hand side of the file you’re working on and allows you to see exactly where in the document you are located. This is especially useful in a big file as a quick visual reference. I found that I’d turn it on of the file extended outside of the coding window and back off when it wasn’t needed.
While Sublime doesn’t have a project drawer it does have an awesome project file search. In fact I’ve pretty much decided that if the project file search works like this I don’t really need a project drawer to view my project files. Navigating files with a mouse removes your hands from the keyboard and slows down your coding process. So yeah I’m totally willing to give up the project drawer for something more efficient.
The Bad
As I’ve stated above Sublime has a ton of options but unfortunately the way to access those options is a bit kludgy. While the other code editors I’ve reviewed so far have nice GUI interfaces for working with the options Sublime just opens up an XML file with the options labelled. The labels are pretty descriptive but the reality is that it’s not a GUI interface which makes it more difficult to work with.
Sublime also makes a project file for the project. Again it’s something I wish I didn’t have to deal with but it seems that you can’t really have a project without some file that references and remembers where all the assets are stored. Not huge points against the tool but still something I could live without.
Conclusion
So far Sublime seems to be the best option I’ve found for Windows. It’s quick clean and pretty well-organized. I can see that people just really getting into coding could be a bit overwhelmed by the options provided but for someone willing to put the bit of effort in need to decode the options this is a killer code editor for Windows.
In all honesty if I hadn’t talked about reviewing some of the other editors I think I’d just stick with Sublime. It’s got the right blend of features and the few draw backs aren’t anywhere big enough to make the tool unusable.