Zen Coding — a new way of writing HTML and CSS code
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New version 0.7 is available (March 13, 2011), read for more info.
Zen Coding is an editor plugin for high-speed HTML, XML, XSL (or any other structured code format) coding and editing. The core of this plugin is a powerful abbreviation engine which allows you to expand expressions—similar to CSS selectors—into HTML code. For example:
div#page>div.logo+ul#navigation>li*5>a...can be expanded into:
Abbreviation engine has a modular structure which allows you to expand abbreviations into different languages. Zen Coding currently supports CSS, HTML, XML/XSL and HAML languages via .
Current features of abbreviation engine
- ID and CLASS attributes: div#page.section.main.
- Custom attributes: div[title], a[title="Hello world" rel], td[colspan=2].
- Element multiplication: li*5 will output <li> tag five times.
- Item numbering with $ character: li.item$*3 will output <li> tag three times, replacing $ character with item number.
- Multiple '
characters in a row are used as zero padding, i.e.: li.item$$ → li.item001
Abbreviation groups with unlimited nesting: div#page>(div#header>ul#nav>li*4>a)+(div#page>(h1>span)+p*2)+div#footer. You can literally write a full document markup with just a single line. support div tag name can be omitted when writing element starting from ID or CLASS: #content>.section is the same as div#content>div.section. (v0.7) Text support: p>{Click }+a{here}+{ to continue}.To better understand how Zen Coding works, watch and read .
Zen Coding isn’t only a decent abbreviation engine, it also provides some very useful actions for HTML-coder’s every day needs, like: Wrap with Abbreviation, Tag Balancing, Toggle Comment, Remove Tag etc. .
Officially supported editors
These plugins are developed by Zen Coding team and guarantee to have full support of all Zen Coding latest features.
- Aptana/Zend Studio/Eclipse (crossplatform)
- TextMate (Mac). Available in two flavors: basic snippets (Zen HTML and Zen CSS) and full-featured plugin (ZenCoding for TextMate). Bundles > Zen Coding menu item
- Coda (Mac) — , via . Plug-ins > TEA for Coda > Zen Coding menu item
- Espresso (Mac) — , via . Zen Coding is bundled with Espresso by default, but you should upgrade ZC to latest version. Actions > HTML menu item
- Komodo Edit/IDE (crossplatform) — . Tools > Zen Coding menu item
- Notepad++ (Windows). Zen Coding menu item Also a Python version of NPP plugin is available:
- PSPad (Windows). Scripts > Zen Coding menu item
- <textarea> (browser-based). See .
- editArea (browser-based). See .
- CodeMirror (browser-based). See .
Third-party supported editors
These plugins are using official Zen Coding engine and developed by third-party developers. Thus, no guarantee that they support all latest ZC features.
- Dreamweaver (Windows, Mac)
- Sublime Text (Windows)
- Sublime Text 2 (crossplatform) —
- UltraEdit (Windows)
- TopStyle (Windows)
- GEdit (crossplatform) — ,
- BBEdit/TextWrangler (Mac) —
- Visual Studio (Windows) — at
- EmEditor (Windows) —
- Sakura Editor (Windows) —
- NetBeans (crossplatform) —
- Chrome Extension —
- Userscript for Greasemonkey —
- Geany —
- RJ TextEd —
- AkelPad —
- — built-in in v2.2.1
Unofficial implementations
These plugins are developed by third-party and has their own ZC engine implementation, which leads to different feature set and abbreviation syntax. Zen Coding team has no relation to this projects.
- IntelliJ IDEA/WebStorm/PHPStorm (crossplatform) — built-in in latest versions
- Emacs (crossplatform) —
- Vim (crossplatform) — ,
- for Visual Studio