- The file system; you don't need one when you're building an HTML prototype. Instead you have sheets, where you can organise multiple "files" (URIs, basically) based around how you want to organise, not how some arbitrary hierarchy of nested folders wants you to.
- Code completion; intellisense and other completion usually pops up an alphabetic list of everything available in the namespace. In the case of CSS, typing "a" presents you with autocomplete starting with "azimuth". When do you ever need azimuth? So instead, we built "common sense code completion", where the likely most-used properties are surfaced at the top of the list. Now, writing HTML and CSS is mostly a case of pressing tab a lot, and up or down when you don't want the auto-suggested default.
- Browser-based; why even write code in a desktop IDE, especially HTML/CSS? Doing in the browser has so many advantages, such as web browsers' awesome tab features or, since it's a web app, everything you write being instantly available online.
- Collaboration; as a web app, no more checking in and updating. We handle version management and you just work on your code with your team (long term: Google-style realtime collaboration?)
There's a lot to improve about today's IDEs. We got started on one specific for simple HTML development. Someone else should solve this problem for programming languages.
Some things we tried to fix:
- The file system; you don't need one when you're building an HTML prototype. Instead you have sheets, where you can organise multiple "files" (URIs, basically) based around how you want to organise, not how some arbitrary hierarchy of nested folders wants you to.
- Code completion; intellisense and other completion usually pops up an alphabetic list of everything available in the namespace. In the case of CSS, typing "a" presents you with autocomplete starting with "azimuth". When do you ever need azimuth? So instead, we built "common sense code completion", where the likely most-used properties are surfaced at the top of the list. Now, writing HTML and CSS is mostly a case of pressing tab a lot, and up or down when you don't want the auto-suggested default.
- Browser-based; why even write code in a desktop IDE, especially HTML/CSS? Doing in the browser has so many advantages, such as web browsers' awesome tab features or, since it's a web app, everything you write being instantly available online.
- Collaboration; as a web app, no more checking in and updating. We handle version management and you just work on your code with your team (long term: Google-style realtime collaboration?)
There's a lot to improve about today's IDEs. We got started on one specific for simple HTML development. Someone else should solve this problem for programming languages.