Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Glad to hear drag and drop is on the horizon somewhere.

Are you going to support loading loading up the global "find" terms from the selection using command-e? That is a pretty essential feature, in my view, for any kind of coding of Web pages (especially because it often involves switching back and forth between the Web browser's rendered view and the HTML code view). Not supporting that is like not supporting copy/paste and the global pasteboard.

Mac keyboard shortcuts are shown here: OS X keyboard shortcuts

Take a look at Command-E and Command-G and Command-Shift-G. Those work globally across multiple apps (but not in Edge Code).

For instance, suppose I am editing some HTML in BBEdit (or Espresso or other code editors on the Mac), and I switch to Safari or Chrome to edit it. Then I notice that the word that is supposed to be "prestidigitation" is actually spelled as "presidigation" in the 43rd paragraph. I simply highlight it in the Web browser, switch to BBEdit, press Command-G, and BBEdit instantly finds that word in my huge page of source code. (I could also do this in reverse, to find in Chrome the word that I highlighted in BBEDit, or find in Safari the word I highlighted in Chrome).

Or suppose my boss e-mails me to tell me that our product "Widget" will now be renamed as "Gizmo", and that I should change all the references on all the pages of our site. Well, I just highlight the word "Widget" in Mail, switch to BBEdit, press Command-Shift-F (BBEdit's multi-file find command), type "Gizmo" into the "replace" field, and hit "enter". BBEdit finds and replaces the word on multiple pages throughout my site.

Or even staying within the code editor, it is easier to highlight a string of code (like <td bgcolor="yellow" color="red" valign="top" align=left>), press Command-E to define that as the search string, make some changes to the code on that one line in the editor (like <td class="special">), highlight it again, press Command-Option-E to define that as the replacement string (a BBEdit shortcut), then find and replace every instance of that in the page without having to type anything but my one correction.

This is just a couple examples of the nice integration that Mac offers to apps that use it, and the way a good code editor extends that to provide even nicer conveniences to people that have to do a lot of typing already in order to code. But if you don't even support the standard Command-E, then you are still catching up with the most basic of basic text editors on the Mac (such as "TextEdit" that is included with every Mac), and not a real code editor. It's singling your app out as being non-standard and deficient on the Mac.

You should also study your competition on the Mac. BBEdit has lots of features designed for people editing code, such as regular expression "grep" searches, searching with or without case sensitivity, changing the case of the selection, finding and changing differences in 2 side-by-side files one line at a time, viewing invisible character, and much more. Their manual is here: [PDF] BBEdit 10.5.5 User Manual - Bare Bones Software. Another good code editor on the Mac is MacRabbit - Espresso - The Web Editor. Another is Coda 2. You should try them out, to see how much catching up is required to move from "text editor" to "competitive HTML code editor".

Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't aware of that functionality. Sounds interesting.

 

> if you don't even support the standard Command-E

 

It's supported. It's just a different keyboard shortcut key: Cmd-Shift-B

No, Cmd-Shift-B just seems to be "Find Again whatever is currently selected". It doesn't change what I am finding in other apps, and "Command-G" doesn't find-again what I selected and did Command-E on in other apps. That is slightly similar, within its own silo, but is far from supporting "the standard Command-E".

> regular expression "grep" searches, searching with or without case sensitivity

 

Both supported in Brackets.

OK, I didn't recognize that in the UI until now, and it's weird to have to use a different command to get to "Replace", but I'll give you this one.

> changing the case of the selection, viewing invisible character

 

Supported as Extensions

 

> finding and changing differences in 2 side-by-side files one line at a time

 

Brackets does not yet have "diff" support, but that's better handled as an extension, anyway.

I disagree, but I guess being able to cobble together fuller functionality from a bunch of independently written extension modules is better than nothing. Are you going to build in a way to browse the catalog of extensions?

Thanks for your feedback. Yes, there's a lot more we want to implement in Brackets. Stay tuned.

OK