Claude Code: Now in Beta in Zed

Zed is so great, I do wish they would focus just a little bit more on bringing the UI just a bit more up to parity with VS Code, I would switch full time.

What do you feel is missing from the UI?

Top of my head switching between IntelliJ and Zed:

- Git UI is extremely barebones with no support for other VCS

- No merge tool or side-by-side diffs

- Configuration is all JSON

- Would be nice having a full file tree for the search editor instead of just the list; having the functionality split between a tab and the outline panel is quite clunky.

- Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows or other configurations (multiple docks per side, multiple copies of the same panel linked to a specific tab).

Zed is basically a slightly more featured text editor, so it does a good job when I just want to open something quickly and do small edits. So it's really replacing Sublime Text.

But I find myself hopping out to other tools when I'm using Zed which wasn't really common with IntelliJ. So I still want to use a proper IDE for proper development work.

> Configuration is all JSON

Curious as someone dabbling with building an editor: what do you prefer? A different configuration language? A GUI? How do you save and sync settings? Just with JetBrains account sync?

> Ability to move panels (files/git/console/debugger/etc) into standalone windows

Is Zed's "zoom in" feature (shift-escape) that quickly maximises the active pane (excluding the file browser/git pane) enough? Or are you looking for the separate window experience of IntelliJ? (e.g. JetBrains lets you pop-out the commit window, I believe, which can be nice since once you close it you're back in the editor with nothing to switch or rearrange.)

Yes, a GUI for settings is nice if only for one thing: so there can be a search box that you can use to search over all the settings to find what you need in a pinch. It's a lot friendlier if I can do something like "Open Settings > Ctrl+F > 'Font'" or whatever than having to go find the manual and look it up.

I don't care about the configuration language so much personally (though JSON is of course pretty lame in a lot of ways for that task.)