This list is clearly not comprehensive, but these are a few things I’ve been wishing for lately or thought of just now.
CSS IDE Wishlist
- Order auto-complete based on usage, not alphabet
I’m sick of typing “d” and getting “direction” when I clearly have never used the CSS direction property in my entire life. Clearly I mean display. I use the display property all the $*(#ing time, and yet every time I hit “d” what do I get? - Arrange properties alphabetically or by group
I’m a little obsessive about organizing my style sheets, and as part of that I generally try to keep properties in the same general place for each rule. For example, I try to keep positioning properties near the beginning of each declaration, presentational properties after that, and anything else last. But of course the order gets messed up. Wouldn’t it be really cool if you could just press a button and have your IDE reorder all your declarations so they follow some set of rules? Maybe a little overboard, but it would be really useful.
HTML IDE Wishlist
- Pattern recognition
OK, how many times have I populated a list with the following code:<li><a href="#">Something</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Something Else</a></li>
Wouldn’t it be really cool if on the third list item an auto-complete drop down popped up offering:
<li><a href="#">|</a></li>
Or something similar
- Lorem ipsum autocomplete
I know some IDEs have a lorem ipsum generator built in, but wouldn’t it be cool if when you started typing lorem ips it would offer something like:
- Lorem ipsum (1 paragraph)
- Lorem ipsum (2+ paragraphs…) — would pop up a generator dialog
- Lorem ipsum (list of 10 elements)
- Lorem ipsum (list of elements…) — would pop up a generator dialog
Even cooler would be if it adjusted the suggestions from context—so if you were in a list it would offer a list first, etc.
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