Review: WebStorm 5 IDE provides powerful editing features and instant feedback for Web developers - peraleswountold

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Excellent human engineering
Sophisticated options remain easily discoverable
Supports industry-definitive project frameworks

Cons

Delay on starting a new project using a framework
Vital Edit feature not understandably authenticated

Our Verdict

WebStorm is a sophisticated IDE for JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, and other Web growing languages.

Extraordinary of the great things about developing for the Web is the low barrier to entry. Many tutorials are available online, and you can ascertain more or less CSS and HTML from whatever website just by inspecting its code in any modern Browser. Best of complete, when it's time to depart coding, any undecorated text editor program–even Notepad–nates do the job. So wherefore should you spend $49 on WebStorm, a development environment for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS? The answer is that it might wrench you into a better developer.

WebStorm supports recent languages such as Sassing and Less.

WebStorm's effective Live Cut feature is new to version 5. With Live Edit, you can calculate at your page in Google Chrome as you're editing, and any modify you earn in your cypher is instantly reflected in Chrome. You don't have to save the page, nor manually refresh it in Chrome–the update process is just seamless, and is simple to set up, requiring scarce a dislodge Chrome add-on. Live Edit likewise works with CSS and JavaScript, and vendor JetBrains put together an impressive video recording demo showing how the feature can be used to chop-chop put to sleep in concert a working JavaScript application.

If you come to WebStorm from an editor in chief such every bit Notepad++ or Vim, you will quickly recognize that WebStorm is not a copy editor. Sure, it has a glib copy editor component part with autocompletion, code folding, and more; but that's only component part of the picture. You aren't unlikely to bug out a CSS file out into WebStorm for a quickly edit and be finished information technology: WebStorm is an IDE, and IDEs work with projects. So the first thing WebStorm wants you to do is to import your existing piece of work as a contrive. If you keep down a live online locate, that way downloading your work and creating an offline project.

The next logical step is to put the cast under a version ascendency system, as serious developers normally do. WebStorm is well integrated with several version control systems, including the ever-popular Git. Its VCS menu lets you check in revisions, browse the repository, create and apply patches, and Sir Thomas More.

WebStorm helps you start new projects in style, too: It features intrinsical support for Twitter's Bootstrap framework, for HTML5 Boilerplate, and for a number of other frameworks. When I asked it to part with a new project based on Bootstrap, it asked me what version of Bootstrap I want, and so it pulled the framework's official Git repository, unzipped information technology, and presented me with a project that was ready for me to start operative on. In a previous verion, I did have to wait a moment before I could browse in the project folder, because WebStorm was engaged parsing it. Version 5.0 solved this job.

WebStorm's Settings dialog makes it easy to track down the setting you want to change.

WebStorm's Settings dialog consists of a sprawling tree of categories and subcategories, many of which contain inherent trees of their own. IT would have been bewildering if not for one great feature: live search. If you need to change something in the way WebStorm indents your code, simply type indentand the tree will narrow to admit only categories related to indenting code. Click a category, and its entries volition come prepared dimmed: Solitary the relevant setting appears at full brightness, so IT instantly pops outgoing at you.

Other parts of WebStorm are similarly keyboard-centric. Privation to do something but aren't sure how to proceed? Press Ctrl-Fracture-A and just start typing (for example, fold if you deprivation to get ahead a fold using the keyboard). WebStorm will instantaneously search all of its menu items and settings for the substring you typed, and will let you execute the litigate that you pauperism directly from that dialog, so there's nobelium postulate to James Henry Leigh Hunt through menus. IT volition even show you connected keyboard shortcuts, so you won't induce to use Ctrl-Shift-A the adjacent metre (Ctrl-Numpad-+ expands the current code fold). Webstorm's autocompletion support is excellent as well, right down to converting CSS colour in names to hexadecimal numbers.

WebStorm's Live Editing feature updates the browser windowpane as you type, no saving and refreshing required.

WebStorm solves a problem that many Web developers don't live they have–but once you give it a chance, you may ne'er look noncurrent. It may even get you started on your first serious project. At $49 for a personal developer license, this app offers excellent note value for money. Also, if you contribute to an open-source project, you may qualify for a free license.

Note: The "Try IT for free" button on the Intersection Information page will download the software to your system. This review is an update to the June 2022 review articl of version 4.0.