Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Preview
Start a free Courses trial
to watch this video
Learn what text editors are, and how they can help you manage and format your code.
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
[MUSIC]
0:00
A text editor is a program that offers
a huge variety of features to make writing
0:04
code easier and faster.
0:09
Word processing programs
like Microsoft Word or
0:10
Google Docs are designed to help you
manage and format the presentation of text
0:13
to change the text layout, color,
size, font, format, and so on.
0:18
In a similar way, text editors provide
tools to make it easier to manage and
0:23
format code.
0:27
Text editors can automatically
complete HTML tags, so
0:28
that you don't have to
type everything out.
0:31
They can highlight brackets and
0:34
curly braces to make it easier to tell
where your functions begin and end.
0:35
They can also identify mistakes,
like a missing bracket.
0:39
They let you visualize your project's file
structure by listing your folders and
0:43
files.
0:46
They provide color coding to distinguish
different parts of a program,
0:47
like a JavaScript function or a string.
0:51
You may have used Treehouse Workspaces to
follow along with some of our courses.
0:53
Workspaces is also a text editor and
is great for
0:57
following along with a Treehouse teacher
and for working with different coding
0:59
tasks without worrying about
how to set up the project.
1:04
But for a more real world scenario, you
should use a text editor installed on your
1:07
computer to work on files and folders that
are also stored locally on your computer.
1:11
While the text editor offers some fabulous
features that will help you manage and
1:16
organize your code, it doesn't create
any special or mysterious files.
1:20
The files you create can be opened with
other text editors and viewed, deleted,
1:24
moved, or changed using your
computer's file management system,
1:28
such as File Explorer on Windows or
Finder on a Mac.
1:31
There are many options for
text editors out there.
1:35
Popular traces includes Sublime Text,
Brackets, and Visual Studio Code.
1:37
In this workshop, we'll use one called
Atom because it's free, easy to use, and
1:42
has great documentation.
1:47
To download and install Atom, go to
atom.io and click on the Download button.
1:48
Then, follow the instructions to
get it installed on your computer.
1:55
For detailed instructions
on how to install Atom,
1:58
click on Documentation >
Atom Flight Manual > Installing Atom.
2:02
Go ahead and install it and
meet me in the next video,
2:07
where I'll show you how to
manage project files with Atom.
2:09
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up