It's worth mentioning that Emacs operates on files the exact way you want Zed to work (on your philosophy page). I'm not trying to be one of those "Emacs already does this" guys, but you seem to legitimately think it's a new concept, when most people using Emacs use it like that.<p>"Like that" being that we don't care if a file is open or closed. If I'm swapping between 2 files a lot, I will just swap buffers, but usually I just navigate straight to whatever file I need and open it. If it's already open, the buffer will come up; otherwise a buffer will be created. ido-mode makes it trivial to query files/buffers: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsgPNVIMkIE</a><p>(edit: inversely, ido-mode actually saves a history of opened files so if you try to switch to a buffer of a file that isn't open, but you've opened before, it will transparently open it for you and it feels like it was never closed)<p>Also, same thing with file creation. I'll just navigate to the file I want to create and hit enter.
Thanks for posting, and great work so far! Unfortunately, I encountered a few deal-breaker issues with Zed. So here are a few criticisms, if this helps you improve the project (but by no means let this detract from the current success of a great project!):<p>1. IMO you're using the wrong text matching algorithm for file search. This is pretty critical, considering it's the main interface for opening files.<p>Zed seems to search for simple text substrings only, whereas both Sublime Text 2 and Xcode look for the longest common subsequence. This is <i>huge</i>, for me at least; in Xcode or ST2 I can type the first few letters of one of my files, followed by a few more letters from different words in it, followed by ".cpp" and it finds the file.<p>Zed (as is) is completely unusable to me, because my project folder contains many similarly named files (.h, .cpp) as well as a ton of other source files from external libraries/modules with similar sub-words with what I'm searching for which for some reason always show up first and saturate the search results. With Zed there's no way to narrow down to what I'm looking for besides typing in the full name of the file. With ST2 or Xcode this is not a problem due to LCS.<p>2. This is not your fault necessarily, but it's a big deal to me: Text rendering is slow in Zed (and in every other web-technology-based code editor I've tried, e.g. Light Table).<p>For example, scrolling is even choppier than Xcode. The primary (if not sole) reason I moved away from Xcode to ST2 was because Xcode's horribly laggy UI was driving me crazy.<p>This is a bit of a personal rant, but we're living in an age with multi-gigaflop CPUs and multi-terraflop GPUs, yet we have somehow regressed to a point where scrolling (of all things) is laggy? IMO this is absurd, as an industry trend in general. For this reason, I generally dislike the trend to write everything (including local apps) in HTML/CSS/JS. These technologies really weren't designed to support this sort of complex dynamic UI. While it's quite impressive what's possible despite this, the stress of forcibly warping HTML/CSS/JS to accomplish some of these UI feats shows through as horrible inefficiency.
>Can’t some random person fork the project and attempt same thing? Yep. Worse, they can fork the project, and create a proprietary version and start selling it.<p>If you released it under the GPL, then they would not legally be allowed to make a proprietary version and start selling it. Also, the GPL does not prevent you from selling your software: <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html</a>
Sorry for negativity, but is it really a code editor or yet another notepad clone with syntax highlighting? There are too many of the latter and almost none of the former.<p>I believe code editor to be called one must be designed to work with the code and provide standard facilities to manipulate upon it. The rest is for particular language support module that'd recognize semantics and do the transformations.<p>For example, the very core must have option to bind language module-provided semantics data to text fragments, so, say, highlighter (a proper one, not a TextMate-like mess of regexps) would base its work upon knowing not only "syntax regexp says this is a variable" but "semantic analyzer says this is a variable `foo`, and it's also used here and there, too (but not there, it's another scope), if that matters", while remaining generic.<p>(Edited: minor re-formatting)
Congrats on launching, this looks like an interesting project.<p>Sorry if I missed this from the post, but is there any particular reason why Zed is tied to Chrome? Are there any technical benefits?<p>P.S. I am asking because I am currently involved in a project of similar type - a web based GUI for databases (MySQL, Postgres, MSSQL, Oracle) - Datazenit[0], but we decided against shipping it as a packaged Chrome app, because it would narrow potential user base.<p>[0] - <a href="http://datazenit.com/" rel="nofollow">http://datazenit.com/</a><p>P.P.S. Just to let you know - link to your twitter account is broken (<a href="https://twitter.com/zed_editor" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/zed_editor</a>).
I'm using it for a few months after 10 years of Vim.<p>It's very similar to Vim, with proper defaults and JavaScript as approachable language compared to vimscript.<p>I believe the most innovative thing Zed introduces is hackability. Configuration is basically just another project inside the editor.<p>Other cool features/defaults are presented on <a href="http://zedapp.org/features/" rel="nofollow">http://zedapp.org/features/</a>
I read that you're not sure how you will earn an income but basically, you will depend on the generosity of your users. If I might try one tip:<p>Who are you? What drives you? Tell us a bit about yourself on your website. I think it will help with income.
On ChromeOS, I got stuck on the very first screen:<p>I can either enter a Project or a URL to edit. Typing text in either place does nothing interesting. "Enter" does nothing.<p>Clicking around, I can't find any way to make a new window. All I want to do is see your editor and start playing with it. I don't even really want to edit a file yet. No obvious way to make any of that happen.<p>The first window is too small. The note about how to edit remotely requires scrolling, but it isn't obvious that the page needs to be scrolled.
I really want to suggest rewriting it in native code. A web based editor is a fine side project but if you want it to be a business people pay for, it needs to have native performance.<p>It's popular to claim that the web is near native performance, but honestly, it's a load of horseshit. Web performance is better than it's ever been but it still has a long way to go before it's anywhere near native.
I hope it works out for you.<p>I'll be hesitant about the productivity pitch though...a lot of developers don't truly care about productivity in the way that one would expect. Often what opinionated developers want is something that conforms to their opinions, productivity just becomes a convenient excuse for the choice of a particular tool.<p>At least as someone who's spent a lot of time pitching productivity to developers I have become skeptical that developers value it as much as one would ordinarily expect. I am the developer of HiveMind (crudzilla.com), a web app platform that literally allows you to get a whole bunch of things done with writing little to no code. I find this pitch simply doesn't fly with a lot of developers :)<p>The open source pitch for instance is something I am sure will get you some followers, though how big a following is not certain.<p>Welcome aboard the entrepreneurial train!
Biggest issues with Zed:<p>1) Chrome extension (I understand the stand-alone application is coming)<p>2) Vim-style modality missing (exact keybinding replication is not necessary, just the principle of remaining on the home row)<p>3) Excess editor chrome - the top of the editor takes up 2 lines when it could be compacted to 1
Zed highlights the always forgotten necessity of documentation. The app looks great. Has a few quirks but seems otherwise stable and I LOVE being able to edit remote files with a local editor.<p>But I don't care how good your app is; if you didn't write documentation then you're just not done. And don't go giving me that adage "its open source! contribute the docs yourself." The fact is, its YOUR project that YOU wrote and it is simply incomplete with little/poor documentation.<p>So, to the Zed author: before adding anymore features please take some time and write good quality docs. The community will thank you.
Yes ! I get excited because the author lists "Reduce cognitive load" at the editor's first goal. It's not an absolute and easy to measure metric but is worth having having as a first class citizen. Plus he already proves that he's moving in that direction by removing the concept of open/closed files.<p>For funding: how hard would it be to create a "shared hire" subscription model where participants get a vote into what the author is doing ?
Hi, first off, love that you've decided to keep it open source (lack of open-source code is what pushed me away from sublime into the arms of my current mistress, emacs), keep up the good work!<p>Can I digress into a feature suggestion? This is no small one and I don't really know where it lies on a feasibility scale. One thing I'd really like would be the ability to turn whatever text-box I'm writing in into a frame of my current editor (I currently use edit-with-emacs). I looked into writing a chrome-extension (which is the only way I can think of to accomplish it) with ACE editor to do this but I didn't have enough time.<p>My thoughts are, since you use a web based editor, you can use javascript to replace the input box with a resized frame of your editor, the next requirement is importing your personal user settings from your chrome packaged app into the frame to have it working there (I currently don't know how you'd accomplish this, maybe some integration with google drive which you already have for your notes?).<p>The main reason I think this would be a useful feature is vim keybindings, I use them for everything and feel less productive editing text without them. Being able to integrate the IDE that I use and am used to into every text box ubiquitously on the web seems like a huge win to me.<p>Sorry about the digression, it's just I liked the sound of your application and wanted to share the one thing I've been missing online (which is a web-based editor where it's extensible, and can be used on any site, I do realise that there is a big gap between your project and my feature suggestion, just wanted to make it.)
Interesting, but needs a few tweaks:<p>- I simply cannot resize the windows on a Mac using the Accessibility API (I'm using Moom to tile my windows via keyboard bindings, and Zed is invisible to it)
- Needs a few more docs on how to set up a theme (I tried three times before I managed to set Solarized on)
- As much as it may seem counter its philosophy, I need vim bindings :)<p>And yes, it's a tad slow. So is LightTable, which is why I am still using vim inside a terminal...
Much success and wisdom to you in your efforts - love the courage, and your eagerness to take feedback.<p>As to the app, my recommendation is to avoid putting .zedstate files inside the project directories themselves. Instead, keep them in a ~/.zed/ directory. Keeps folks from having to make special .gitignore commits for all of their projects.
FYI, BitDefender shows site as infected: <a href="http://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info?url=http%3A//zedapp.org/2014/04/zed-the-next-phase&language=en_US" rel="nofollow">http://trafficlight.bitdefender.com/info?url=http%3A//zedapp...</a><p>Might want to check it out, I got a bit red alert before I could visit the page.
Thanks for making this a Chrome App! This will fill a big gap for me on my Chromebook, especially the ability to edit Dropbox files. You should add Google Drive support as well if possible, since you're already in the Chrome ecosystem.
I like Zed author's choices. I don't think there's anything new in them per se, but a different combination of small existing principles may breed an interesting culture. Good luck.
I'll give this a try. I've been knocking around looking for a new OSX editor, and haven't been completely happy with any of them. Current editor-of-choice is Light Table, but I'm not in love with it.<p>It's really interesting to try all these new, modern editors and see the subtle tradeoffs the creators made.
Do you have plan on making the Zed server described in <a href="http://zedapp.org/features/edit-remote-files/" rel="nofollow">http://zedapp.org/features/edit-remote-files/</a> to allow concurrent edit of the same file by different clients to enable collaborative work?
I would love to use a chromebook as my main development machine, but the main thing is that I would like to be able to use Git offline. Has anybody moved to a chromebook as their main machine and been able to use version control while not connected to the internet?
Reading some of the ideas made me update my .vimrc a bit. The point that buffers versus files is mostly useless now is on point. The rest of the points about minimal UI I already use. Create files same way you find them, sure!
I can't avoid thinking it is a sweet attack vector for being a browser extension... I would probably use it if i have to edit on a chromebook, but then again, i prefer to avoid touching chromebooks even with a 10ft pole.
You say: "Worse, they can fork the project, and create a proprietary version and start selling it"<p>So why not release the source code under GPL or even MPL or EPL?
node-webkit is amazing, but is it really suited for an IDE? I don't see how you could launch a node-webkit application as fast as Sublime Text for example.
Mac OS X seems to be incredibly widely used by programmers now. Because every time I see a screen shot to illustrate some GUI, it was taken on a Mac. :)