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What's a Text Editor?
2:57Learn what a text editor does and how it can help you build web pages and applications more quickly and efficiently.
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A text editor is a program that
offers a variety of features to make
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writing code easier and faster.
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Word processing programs like
Microsoft Word and Google Docs
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are designed to help you manage and
format the presentation of text,
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to change the text layout,
color, size, font, and so on.
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In a similar way, text editors provide
tools to make it easier to manage and
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format code.
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Text editors can automatically
complete HTML tags so
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that you don't have to
type everything out.
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They can highlight brackets and
curly braces to make it easier to tell
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where your functions end and
where they begin.
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They can also help you identify mistakes,
like a missing bracket.
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They let you visualize your project's
file structure by listing your folders
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and files.
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They provide color coding to distinguish
different parts of a program,
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like a JavaScript function or string.
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You may have used Treehouse Workspaces to
follow along with some of our courses.
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Workspaces is also a text editor,
and is great for
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following along with the Treehouse
teacher and for working with
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different coding tasks without worrying
about how to set up the project.
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But for more real world scenarios, you
should use a text editor installed on your
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computer to work on files and folders that
are also stored locally on your computer.
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While a text editor offers some fabulous
features that will help you manage and
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organize your code, it doesn't create
any special or mysterious files.
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The files you create can be open
with other text editors and viewed,
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deleted, moved, or changed using your
computer's file management system,
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such as File Explorer on Windows,
or Finder on the Mac.
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There are many options for
text editors out there,
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and if you're new to development,
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it may seem difficult to
know which one to choose.
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Popular choices include Visual Studio
Code, Atom, Sublime Text, and Brackets.
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Text editors are similar enough that you
can switch to a different one pretty
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painlessly.
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So don't worry too much about
how to choose the right one.
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Chances are you'll use several
in your career as a developer.
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In this workshop, we'll use a text editor
called Visual Studio Code because it's
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popular among developers, easy to use,
free, and has great documentation.
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To download and install Visual Studio
Code, go to code.visualstudio.com.
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Click the Download button and
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follow the instructions to
install it on your computer.
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For detailed instructions on how
to install Visual Studio Code,
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you can click on Docs, then Setup,
then choose the platform that you use.
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I'll also leave links in
the teacher's notes on this page.
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Go ahead and get it installed and
meet me in the next video
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where I'll show you how to manage
project files with visual studio code.
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