Keep Documentation Handy with Zeal

Productivity Sauce

Whether you write code for fun or for profit, having instant access to documentation that doesn't depend on a network connection is essential and even critical. That's why it's a good idea to have Zeal installed on your machine. This simple tool provides access to documentation (or docsets) for a wide variety of programming languages and applications: from PHP and Python to Markdown and MongoDB, and everything in between. To populate Zeal with docsets, choose File | Options, switch to the Docsets section, then pick and download the desired docsets.

Zeal's interface is simplicity itself. The left sidebar presents all installed docsets as hierarchical trees, and you can easily navigate through each docset tree by expanding its branches. Alternatively, you can use the Search field to find specific documentation pages in real time. Zeal supports tabs, so you can have multiple documentation pages opened at the same time. If you happen to use a text editor like Atom, Sublime Text, or Vim, you'll appreciate the fact that Zeal is available as plugins for these and other popular editors. This allows you to access documentation directly from within your preferred text editor.