I woke up to a real treat this morning: Sublime Text 3! Sublime Text development has always moved at an incredible pace and now just a few months after 2.0 was released, 3.0 peaks around the corner. ST3 isn't at the point where it can be your daily editor - you will still be using ST2 for some time - but its exciting to take a look at what ST3 has in store for us!

ST3 is only available to registered ST2 owners, you will be reqired to input your license key upon launch. If you forget where you put your license key, go to Preferences → Browse Packages and then open the settings folder and look for License.sublime_license

What's new

You can read all the new features over at the Sublime Blog, here are the main features along with some explanation and commentary.

It's even faster!

Sublime has always been a blazing fast editor and Jon Skinner has outdone himself with this. The editor starts and opens up my last project in less than a second. On OSX the icon doesn't even reach the top of the bounce before it has loaded.

Python 3.3 & Packages API

Sublime has now switched to Python 3.3. If you aren't familar, Python is the programming language that Sublime Text uses to expose it's API. It is how we get all those great packages. Python 3.3 has been out for a while, but many developers have been dragging their heels in upgrading as many of the packages haven't been ported over. I'm not a Python developer, but according to the Python Wall of Superpowers things are looking better lately.

The downside to this is that most Sublime Text packages will need to be ported to ST2/Python 3.3. The author of Sublime Text says porting to the new API involve minimal work.

Sublime Text package manager doesn't work yet, but the author Will Bond says work is already underway. Will also has a number of popular packages so I would watch his github, twitter and site for his experiences with porting everything over.

**UPDATE: **Will Bond has updated package manage to work with Sublime Text 3. See his commend below.

Pane Management

Previously sublime text only allowed you to split your editor into 1-3 columns, 1-3 rows or a grid of 4. This has changed in Sublime Text 3 which exposes controls for splitting panes indefinitely.

I played around with the commands and keyboard shortcuts for a bit but I will be sticking with Origami to manage my panes as I find the commands for moving files splitting panes to be more natural.

Symbol Indexing

ST3 introduces project wide Goto Symbol and Goto Definition. Previously Goto symbol fuzzy search only worked when you specifically noted which file you wanted to look in. In the example above I'm able to see everywhere the post_render function is called in Octopress. This is a really big step up for Sublime that may have a few IDE-lovers jumping ship.

Themes and colour schemes

The UI of Sublime hasn't changed at all other than a few animations when hiding/showing the sidebar. I've tested ST3 with my Cobalt2 theme and color scheme and I'm happy to report that everything worked flawlessly.

Prices

Sublime text 3 will go for $70 or a $30 upgrade from ST2 ($15 if you purchased it recently, so don't hold off buying ST2).  Money extremely well spent.

Wishlist

This is just the beginning of ST3 and I'm excited to see what it has in store for the future. A few things that are on my wishlist:

* Full blown terminal integration

* Binary file display  - One thing Coda does really well. If I click an image, I'm able to preview it and get its dimensions.

* Find/Replace Macros - being able to record a find/replace and play it back or run with arguments would be very handy.

* Sidebar icons - Sublime excells in its simple interface but having icons for folders/filetypes is something that has always been on my list

* **What is yours? **- Post in the comments what you hope Sublime Text 3 will bring