Atom is an open source text editor made by GitHub that lets you easily customize every aspect of it. The entire application is written in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML so hacking the core and writing packages is much more straight forward.
A text editor for the home of tomorrow...today!
width="850" height="478" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y7aEiVwBAdk?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; width: 501.188px; color: rgb(82, 76, 76); font-family: acumin-pro, sans-serif; font-size: 20px; line-height: 32.6px; margin: 35px auto !important; border: 1px solid rgb(241, 242, 241) !important; max-width: none !important; border-radius: 0px !important; background: rgb(241, 242, 241);">The main goal of Atom is that anyone can hack the core to make it do what they want. Everything is customizable via CSS or JavaScript. If you want a feature that doesn't exist it's very easy to start writing your own package.
Themes in Atom are often high quality and are flexible. When you install one of the 1,246 themes available, anything you don't like can be changed by editing one of the .less
files in it's package folder.
Atom doesn't have features in the traditional sense, it creates packages that add to it's hackable
core. Any of the 91 (at this time) packages Atom uses can be found on their website. This allows for a lot of creativity because when a package doesn't exist it can easily be created or extended.
Ctrl + T
Atom indexes your current project and makes it easy to search from the Fuzzy Finder for any file you want. Mind you unless you tell the settings for filetree to ignore folders like node_modules
or vendor
you can end up with slow searches or sluggish performance due to the number of files typically present in these folders.
Ctrl + \
View and open files in your current project. Provides many common actions like cutting and pasting folders, copying the proejct path to a file, or opening a file up in your native file explorer.
When you want a new package or theme installed, open your settings and click Install. Here you can search for packages or themes, and when you find one you want click install. Typically you shouldn't need to restart Atom but in rare cases it's necessary.
First couple things you want to change in the main settings for Atom is:
.DS_Store
and .git
don't appear needlessly.The following plugins give Atom some of the most popular features that Sublime Text 3 has.
If you see any missing please comment!
A preview and easily scrollable view of the full source code. A bunch of plugins have been written from Code Glance to Linter that greatly enhance minimap's helpfulness.
https://atom.io/packages/minimap
Alt + Shift + P
Easy access and management to all your projects. Allows for project specific settings and options.
https://atom.io/packages/project-manager
When you double click a word, it and every other matching word in the file becomes highlighted.
https://atom.io/packages/highlight-selected
Highlight text to drag n' drop it somewhere else in your file.
https://atom.io/packages/simple-drag-drop-text
The following plugins are what I feel makes Atom's already great feature set, amazing. I use these in my day to day work to increase productivity.
Ctrl + Shift + H
Shortcuts to common git actions without needing to switch to your terminal.
https://atom.io/packages/git-plus
Provides most of Vim's features to Atom blending the two together. Large portions of Vim have been reproduced but is still being added to.
https://atom.io/packages/vim-mode
A very helpful tool for finding, previewing, and resolving merge conflicts within your project.
https://atom.io/packages/merge-conflicts
When a color is detected and the color picker is activated a very helpful window opens that lets you
https://atom.io/packages/color-picker
tab
A personal favorite because it saves so much time typing when building out pages. Just give it some hints about the html you want made and it will expand that into true html.
https://atom.io/packages/emmet
Makes writing documentation faster by detecting the details of the function below it and autofilling much of the comment.
https://atom.io/packages/docblockr
Detects and displays colors behind the representative text so you don't have to remember what color a number is.
https://atom.io/packages/pigments
Probably one of the most helpful packages made, this visualizes and notifies you of errors within your project. Be sure to install all relevant linters so it can detect errors for you using eslint, phplint, or etc.
https://atom.io/packages/linter
Autocompletes require/import statements for you by following the path you type and showing you the available files at that location.
https://atom.io/packages/autocomplete-modules
Updates your packages automatically by checking for updates at the interval defined in it's settings.
https://atom.io/packages/auto-update-packages
Lets you set the template for Atom's title bar letting you show the relevant information about your current project, git, and file.
Here's the template I use:
<%= projectName %> <% if (relativeFilePath) { %>- <%= relativeFilePath %> <% } %> - <%= gitHead %>
https://atom.io/packages/custom-title
Pretty and good for visual grepping, these filetype icons appear next to files in your filetree, fuzzy finder, and tabs. You have the choice of colored or monochrome icons.
https://atom.io/packages/file-icons
My personal must-have/favorite is git-plus because the shortcuts it provides have clearly made me more productive.
If you'd like to browse what Atom has to offer checkoutAtom Packages for helpful plugins and Atom Themes for any themes or color schemes you want.
If you'd like to try out my personal setup for Atom:
AtomBackups
in your home directory.Recommended font replacements for Operator Mono:
What's are your favorite packages for Atom?
From: https://scotch.io/bar-talk/best-of-atom-features-plugins-acting-like-sublime-text