Aptana
Category domino
For a while now, I've been using Eclipse to do all of my Javascript development. The primary reason is because the Subclipse plugin allows painless integration with Subversion. But until recently I'd been at a loss to find a good plugin to provide code completion. And then I found Aptana. It also exists as a standalone IDE, but the Eclipse plugin was precisely what I was looking for. Apparently it's been around since last March, but "javascript eclipse plugin" just wasn't descriptive enough to tell Google I was looking for it.
One aspect of the code completion functionality that really comes in handy: in the plugin preferences, you can tell it which browsers you're developing for (the choices are IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, and Safari). Why? Well, whenever the auto-complete pops up, it lists the source of each option - either a file that you've included in your "Code Assist profile", or JS Core / DOM. If the option is considered core Javascript or part of the DOM, an icon appears for each of the browsers listed in your preferences... grayed out if that browser does not support the option. Using the arrow keys to navigate to the preferred option - or continuing to type until it's the selected option - displays an additional tooltip with any available documentation regarding that option, as well as detail about which versions of each browser support it. For example, it was news to me that Safari doesn't support String.split(). This feature makes cross-browser development so much easier. No more having to memorize every last discrepancy between each user agent.
For a while now, I've been using Eclipse to do all of my Javascript development. The primary reason is because the Subclipse plugin allows painless integration with Subversion. But until recently I'd been at a loss to find a good plugin to provide code completion. And then I found Aptana. It also exists as a standalone IDE, but the Eclipse plugin was precisely what I was looking for. Apparently it's been around since last March, but "javascript eclipse plugin" just wasn't descriptive enough to tell Google I was looking for it.
One aspect of the code completion functionality that really comes in handy: in the plugin preferences, you can tell it which browsers you're developing for (the choices are IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, and Safari). Why? Well, whenever the auto-complete pops up, it lists the source of each option - either a file that you've included in your "Code Assist profile", or JS Core / DOM. If the option is considered core Javascript or part of the DOM, an icon appears for each of the browsers listed in your preferences... grayed out if that browser does not support the option. Using the arrow keys to navigate to the preferred option - or continuing to type until it's the selected option - displays an additional tooltip with any available documentation regarding that option, as well as detail about which versions of each browser support it. For example, it was news to me that Safari doesn't support String.split(). This feature makes cross-browser development so much easier. No more having to memorize every last discrepancy between each user agent.
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Posted by Ben Poole At 15:04:59 On 01/11/2007 | - Website - |