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Review: WebStorm 5 IDE provides powerful editing features and instant feedback for Web developers |
November 14, 2012
One of the great things about developing for the Web is the low barrier to entry. Many tutorials are available online, and you can learn about CSS and HTML from any website just by inspecting its code in any modern Web browser. Best of all, when it's time to start coding, any plain text editor--even Notepad--can do the job. So why should you spend $49 on WebStorm, a development environment for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS? The answer is that it might turn you into a better developer.
WebStorm supports recent languages such as Sass and Less.
WebStorm's impressive Live Edit feature is new to version 5. With Live Edit, you can look at your page in Google Chrome as you're editing, and any change you make in your code is instantly reflected in Chrome. You don't have to save the page, nor manually refresh it in Chrome–the update process is just seamless, and is simple to set up, requiring just a free Chrome add-on. Live Edit also works with CSS and JavaScript, and vendor JetBrains put together an impressive video demo showing how the feature can be used to quickly put together a working JavaScript application.
If you come to WebStorm from an editor such as Notepad++ or Vim, you will quickly recognize that WebStorm is not a text editor. Sure, it has a slick text editor component with autocompletion, code folding, and more; but that's only part of the picture. You aren't supposed to pop a CSS file into WebStorm for a quick edit and be done with it: WebStorm is an IDE, and IDEs work with projects. So the first thing WebStorm wants you to do is to import your existing work as a project. If you maintain a live online site, that means downloading your work and creating an offline project.
The next logical step is to put the project under a version control system, as serious developers usually do. WebStorm is well integrated with several version control systems, including the ever-popular Git. Its VCS menu lets you check in revisions, browse the repository, create and apply patches, and more.
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Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/258227/work_in_a_high_quality_development_environment_with_jetbrains_webstorm.html
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