10 most useful Atom packages I've found
I’ve been using Atom as my primary text editor for the last 6s months. I switched to Atom though because the core editing experience is now “good enough” and the way the editor is built allows for some very cool and unique experiences. Atom (like Visual Studio Code) is built on Electron, Github’s JavaScript environment for building desktop apps. Because it is built with web technologies and was designed from the beginning to be extensible, it is much easier for most developers to build rich visual extensions on top of Atom that provide unique UIs for editor functions than it is in Sublime Text, Vim, Emacs or an IDE. The following are some of the “most interesting” Atom packages I’ve found. Interesting in this case means that they really only could have been done as they are in Atom or a similarly flexible editor.
Minimap
Minimap is one of Atom’s most popular packages, displaying a condensed view of your code for quick navigation. The feature enters your subconscious; you won’t think you’re using it, but you’ll miss it when it’s not there.
Highlight Selected
When you select a keyword or variable in Sublime Text or Notepad++, all other instances are shown. Highlight Selected brings the feature to Atom and is even better when combined with minimap-highlight-selected.
Linter
Linter allows you to lint your code, linters will generate warnings and errors based on real-time code analysis. You can install different Linters almost each language has one HTML, CSS, SCSS, JavaScript, TypeScript even some frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap.
Merge conflicts
Merge conflicts is a very helpful tool for finding, previewing, and resolving merge conflicts within your project. It detects the conflict markers left by git merge and overlays a set of controls for resolving each and navigating among them.
Docblockr
Docblockr makes writing documentation faster by detecting the details of the function below it and autofilling much of the comment.
Expose
Expose is a file management tool modeled after Mac OSX’s expose feature. With it, you can instantly display all open files as small thumbnails, and switch quickly between them using the keyboard, which can be super helpful when tabs get out of control.
WakaTime
WakaTime allows you to track your time per project, your programming languages used, logged in time and much more. All you have to do install the plugin and grab a API key from https://wakatime.com/
Pigments
You may have seen CSS hex-color previewers before, but few match Pigments. It parses colors, understands pre-processor variables and even executes color-changing functions.
Autoclose HTML
This may be simple, but I couldn’t live without auto-closing HTML tags: it doubles your mark-up creation velocity! The package allows you to define which tags should complete inline (such as <p></p> or <li></li>) and which create newline blocks.
File icons
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.
Bonus: Activate Power Mode
Activate POWER MODE enables you to write your code in style. Once in power mode, the editor starts shaking as you code which makes you feel Super super COOL and just gets you in the mood to blast out a ton of code. It isn't meant for everyday use. But it is INSANELY COOL.
That's all folks ;)