featured

A quick list of things to make Sublime awesome

There are a lot of great articles out there on how to set up Sublime Text and all the reasons behind those choices. This is NOT one of those. :) Here is a quick list of things that are really popular with Sublime users.

Link Bash to Sublime

On the Mac, run this command in Terminal:

ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

On Windows, follow these directions to launch Sublime Text from the command line.

Install Package Manager in Sublime

Follow these directions: Install Sublime Package Control

Really cool keyboard commands for using Sublime

Open the Commands window

command + shift + p

Quick switch between open files

command + t

Search and replace

command + f + <enter string> + command + d

Put selected string into find field

command + e 

Select a line

command + l

Project search

command + shift + f

Split windows

command + option + shift + 1/2/3

Move the current tab to a new pane

option + control + shift + 2/3

Sort CSS alpha

select lines to sort + f5

Find your selectors

command + r

Recommended preferences in Sublime

Protip: When setting preferences in Sublime text, NEVER use Preferences > Settings - Default. When you upgrade Sublime Text, there is a good chance that these will get completely re-written and any changes/customizations you make will get blown away!

Instead, what you want to edit is your Preferences > Settings - User. When you first open this file, this most likely will be empty. The following is a good example of some popular settings:

{
    // OS X only: This controls if an empty window is created at startup or not.
    "create_window_at_startup": false,

    // Set to true to ensure the last line of the file ends in a newline
    // character when saving
    "ensure_newline_at_eof_on_save": true,

    // Set your p[referred font size]
    "font_size": 15.0,

    // If enabled, will highlight any line with a caret
    "highlight_line": true,

    // Additional spacing at the bottom of each line, in pixels
    "line_padding_bottom": 1,

    // OS X only: When files are opened from finder, or by dragging onto the
    // dock icon, this controls if a new window is created or not.
    "open_files_in_new_window": false,

    // remember_open_files makes the application start up with the last set of
    // open files. Changing this to false will have no effect if hot_exit is
    // true
    "remember_open_files": false,
    "hot_exit": false,

    // Set to true to automatically save files when switching to a different file
    // or application
    "save_on_focus_lost": true,

    // Set to false to disable scrolling past the end of the buffer.
    // On OS X, this value is overridden in the platform specific settings, so
    // you will need to place this line in your user settings to override it.
    "scroll_past_end": true,

    // The number of spaces a tab is considered equal to
    "tab_size": 2,

    // Set to true to insert spaces when tab is pressed
    "translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,

    // Set to true to removing trailing white space on save
    "trim_trailing_white_space_on_save": true,

    // Disables horizontal scrolling if enabled.
    // May be set to true, false, or "auto", where it will be disabled for
    // source code, and otherwise enabled.
    "word_wrap": true,

    // List any packages to ignore here. When removing entries from this list,
    // a restart may be required if the package contains plugins.
    "ignored_packages":
    [
        "Block Cursor Everywhere",
        "Vintage"
    ]
}

Avoid trailing commas

Setting preferences in Sublime is editing code. If there is an error with the code, there is a good chance that Sublime will break and break hard.

All the preferences use a "key"; "value" pair syntax. When there is a pair is that is followed by another pair, this requires a trailing comma, like so:

{
    "key": "string-value",
    "key": 
    [
        "value",
        "value"   <- NO COMMA!!
    ],      
    "boolean": true   <- NO COMMA!!
}

Notice that the last line DOES NOT have a comma.

More good reading


Check out the original post and more resources on Dale’s blog.

Next PostPrevious Post

About the Author