[eggsby]

Why would I want to use or contribute to this over something like http://codemirror.net/ or the various tools powered by codemirror? (light table, jsbin, etc)

edit: I see that this is also powered by codemirror, the editor itself, so what does this offer on top of it?

I can't even find a feature list on this page, and after signing up for the adobe ~cloud~ I haven't been able to make my way to a working demo of the application...

[grey-area]

The docs are a bit confusing - given the target market they should change 'Check it out' to demo or something, but there are binaries you can download for Mac and Windows, you don't have to sign up for the Adobe Cloud thing at all. It's a desktop app, and here's what it looks like:

https://github.com/adobe/brackets/wiki/Brackets-Screenshots

A quick off-the-cuff comparison, not being familiar with all of these tools, I'm sure others will jump in and correct/clarify:

CodeMirror - this is for embedding in pages only, and has no way of editing files etc, so you'd need to use a wrapper like:

CodeMirrorUI - a wrapper using the API to add some editor-like functionality, but it's still not a standalone editor app.

Light Table requires Java, and is focussed on Clojure (and JS?) right now, so although the ideas and interface have been borrowed from in Brackets, it's not really in the same space right now, and is likely to diverge as time passes.

Jsbin - this is probably the closest in feel to the Adobe offering, though it runs in a browser, not as a local app. That rules it out for me.

So this is more like TextMate based on CodeMirror - it could be used as a replacement for another editor like Dreamweaver, Coda, Textmate etc, and while the focus is on html/css/js, it'd be nice to see them expand that eventually to other domains. I suspect though they'll keep it tightly focussed on html, css and js.

It's worth downloading the demos here to try it out:

https://github.com/adobe/brackets/downloads

This looks like a really interesting new direction from Adobe, and an attempt to get back a bit of mindshare in a market where currently they are seen as a stodgy old dinosaur with products like Adobe® Dreamweaver®™. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it as TextMate user currently, however I'd need support for other languages. Having had a little play with the download, I can say it's really not ready for primetime (only live edit of css is working right now, not even html edits), but what you can see looks really impressive, the UI is clean and works well, and if they have the language coverage of CodeMirror that would be really interesting (if not it'll still be useful, but could not replace TextMate for me for example). This might be worth a look in a few months when they have it all working properly.

[ryanstewart]

Mentioned this below as well, but thanks for the feedback on "Check it Out". We just changed it to "Try it" which is a bit clearer.

[drivebyacct2]

your analysis of CodeMirror is very inaccurate http://codemirror.net/

[grey-area]

Would be interested in knowing more detail on this thanks - I had a quick look at their website previously, and their quick summary (which seems to sum the rest up well) is:

CodeMirror is a JavaScript component that provides a code editor in the browser.

NB this does not mean editing files in a filesystem but editing code in a browser (which could then be saved to a db or files by a web app/desktop app). Obviously it's possible to write such an app (like brackets), based on codemirror.

I'd be really interested in a codemirror which did manipulate source code files directly (and was not limited to html,css and js), but got the impression from their website that they offer lots of in-browser editing, but not an app which lets you interact with a local file system and edit files.

Did I get that wrong? If so would love to know more (or any other corrections you'd care to add).

[drivebyacct2]

Oh, I guess we differ on definition of "edit". You can edit the files and it's still really useful (http://play.golang.org is an example).

I mean, you're right in that it can't write to the FS, but that's a HTML limitation... you juts need a shim in webkit container to do this, or you could use filepicker.io or similar techniques.

[grey-area]

Funny you mention play.golang.org as that's exactly what I'd love to be running locally to edit go and ruby, and run it as I edit. Guess I'm old fashioned but prefer to edit locally.

As you say, in theory at least not too hard to wrap in WebKit, but I have a feeling it might be more work than it first appears, and am too busy right now to attempt it and was hoping someone else had. Maybe one day. Thanks for elaborating.

[drivebyacct2]

One of my next projects is to use diff-path-merge to build cloud9 for Go. I want to be able to have collaborative editting combined with Go's fast compiles to have a multi-user cooperative coding environment.

But it will still use a "shim" of sorts. It will basically sync via d-p-m and websockets to a server that will do the saving/building/running and then return the output.