DEV Community

CatWebDev
CatWebDev

Posted on

Emmet: A Productivity Booster for Web Developers.

Emmet is a productivity tool for web developers, particularly those who work with HTML, CSS, and XML. It allows developers to write code snippets that can be expanded into full, valid code blocks with a single keystroke. This tool is widely integrated into many popular text editors and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs).


Abbreviation Expansion.

Emmet uses short syntax to generate HTML and CSS code rapidly. As an example

<body>
  div>ul>li*3
<body>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

It will produce

<body>
<div>
    <ul>
        <li></li>
        <li></li>
        <li></li>
    </ul>
</div>
<body>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Tag wrapping.

It can wrap existing text of code with HTML tags, speeding up the process of structuring content.
Link to the wrap with abbreviation examples

Code snippets.

Emmet includes many built-in snippets for common code patterns and allows users to create custom snippets.
Custom code snippet:

{
    "html": {
        "snippets": {
            "btn": "<button class=\"btn\">${1:Submit}</button>"
        }
    }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Typing btn and expanding it will produce:

<button class="btn">Submit</button>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Attributes and Text.

Abbreviations can include attributes and text.

a[href="https://example.com"]{Example}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

It will produce:

<a href="https://example.com">Example</a>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

CSS support.

Emmet also supports CSS, allowing for rapid writing of style rules. For instance in CSS file
* {
m0
}

It will produce:

* {
  margin: 0;
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Dynamic Values.

Emmet can generate dynamic values such as incrementing numbers, making it useful for creating lists, IDs, classes, and more.

<div>
  ul>li.item$*3
</div>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

It will produce:

<div>
  <ul>
    <li class="item1"></li>
    <li class="item2"></li>
    <li class="item3"></li>
  </ul>
</div>
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Emmet significantly speeds up coding by reducing the amount of repetitive typing required, allowing developers to focus more on design and logic rather than the boilerplate code.


Emmet website
My YouTube channel is catwebdev

Top comments (0)