Transitioning from Dreamweaver to Sublime Text was a game-changer for me. While this post isn’t meant to criticize or complain about Dreamweaver, I found that Sublime Text offered a host of features that made me never look back. As I shifted from web design to web development, Sublime Text proved to be the perfect tool for my coding needs. Let’s explore some of the reasons why Sublime Text outshines its counterparts.
Key Strokes
Although Dreamweaver allows for convenient drag-and-drop functionality, Sublime Text compensates with Key Strokes. This feature enables effortless content insertion without the need to type everything out manually.
Multiple Cursors
One of my personal favourite features in Sublime Text is the ability to select multiple elements simultaneously. This handy functionality has proven invaluable in my text editing endeavours.
Shortcuts
Sublime Text boasts an extensive collection of shortcuts that are absent in Dreamweaver. These shortcuts, ranging from tag wrapping to line duplication and bracket selection, enhance productivity and efficiency. Additionally, you have the flexibility to assign your own key bindings, further tailoring the experience to your preferences.
Fuzzy Search
Sublime Text takes a leap ahead of Dreamweaver with its powerful fuzzy search capabilities. By entering a few key characters, Sublime Text intelligently matches them with relevant commands, streamlining your workflow.
Code Preview
Sublime Text offers a condensed code layout preview, particularly useful for large pages. This feature allows you to quickly navigate and select specific sections of code based on their overall structure.
Bracket and Div Highlighting
Bid farewell to the arduous task of locating closing divs or brackets in Dreamweaver’s lengthy code chunks. Sublime Text effortlessly highlights opening and closing brackets, divs, and other tags, making code navigation a breeze.
Bookmarking
Unbeknownst to many, bookmarking is an excellent feature in Sublime Text. It enables quick navigation to specific areas of code, further enhancing your coding experience.
Thriving Plugin Community
Sublime Text boasts a vast and active plugin community. With thousands of plugins available, you’re likely to find any missing features from other text editors in Sublime Text’s plugin repository.
Configurability
Sublime Text offers unparalleled reconfigurability. From installing custom themes to modify the GUI and code colors, to utilizing plugins and custom key bindings to enhance your coding process, Sublime Text empowers you to tailor the editor to your liking. The ability to split the code editor window and work on multiple files side by side is an added bonus.
Resource Efficiency
Sublime Text requires fewer system resources compared to Dreamweaver. While Dreamweaver’s feature-rich interface consumes significant memory, Sublime Text’s lightweight nature ensures efficient performance with just around 40MB of memory usage.
Lightning-Fast Loading
Sublime Text impresses with its lightning-fast startup time, launching in less than a second. In contrast, Dreamweaver’s comprehensive toolset causes it to take at least 12 seconds to load, often resulting in a sluggish and cumbersome experience.
Enhanced Stability
Sublime Text’s exceptional stability sets it apart from its counterparts. It rarely crashes and loads up swiftly, providing a reliable and uninterrupted coding environment. In contrast, Dreamweaver’s stability has been known to be less reliable.
Affordable Pricing
Sublime Text offers a single license at an affordable price of $70. This is significantly less than the cost of Adobe Creative Cloud and even the free version of Dreamweaver.
While Dreamweaver caters more to designers who prefer a non-coding approach, Sublime Text excels as a coding-focused tool. Dreamweaver’s strengths lie in initial document setup, UI elements, and the convenience of its drag-and-drop design view, enabling website creation without delving into code. However, for those seeking a robust and efficient coding experience, Sublime Text is the clear winner.
