

Cloud9 IDE - Your code anytime, anywhere - sergimansilla
http://cloud9ide.com
Open Source IDE that runs in the cloud - and in your browser. Super fast and integrated with GitHub to make programming a joy!
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mdasen
Not to sound cheap, but the first thing I note is the pricing. It's a little
confusing. Does 33 cents per day mean that I'm only charged on days that I use
it? So, if I use it Monday - Friday, I'll typically pay 7 Euros per month
rather than 10 Euros? Or is it merely saying that it's only 33 cents per day?
I'm also unsure what you mean by a workspace. In the UI photos, there's the
concept of a "project", but I'm unsure if I would need multiple workspaces.

Then there's the cost itself. If 33 cents per day translates into $166.73 per
year (after the conversion to USD), that seems a little expensive. The reason
I say that isn't to say that software must be gratis, but that RubyMine's
commercial license is only $149 and includes all upgrades for a year and you
can upgrade your subscription after that point for just $99 per year. Personal
licenses cost even less.

I'm not saying you don't have a great product - it looks absolutely gorgeous.
I'm merely asking what the value is here. Is it that I don't have to install
my IDE on multiple computers I might use? Is it that it will support multiple
languages at the one low price (while JetBrains has different products for
different languages)? Is it planned that it will support, say, running and
debugging my Rails project without me having to configure environments on
different machines?

I'm seriously asking because I do work on multiple machines (of different
OSs), but I need to be able to run and debug (in my case Rails) projects and
things like Eclipse, TextMate and a terminal, or even gedit with its terminal
plugin will allow me to browse my file hierarchy, get an edit space with
syntax highlighting, and run my application. Plus, while it can be annoying to
set up another box, that doesn't happen very often and it means that things
like relying on gems works.

It looks wonderful and I hope you keep improving it!

~~~
javruben
Great comments. So I just answered about pricing on a comment below, but
here's the gist of it:

We charge per day to give you the flexibility of the cloud. Cloud9 is not an
IDE alone, it's your tooling + test environment in the Cloud. So it's hosted,
hosting costs money and we charge you for it. The idea is that if you are
doing a commercial project with a good hourly rate, then paying 50 cents a day
for the platform isn't a lot if it saves you significant time. If you're
working on an open source project, Cloud9 is free.

The value is that you don't have to configure your systems, you dont have to
keep them up to date and you'll be developing on a system that is identical to
your deployment target. We're adding good deployment support soon to many
different cloud hosters. This way deployment should be really a click of a
button. Then there is the value of collaboration. Being able to work together
with others from within Cloud9, editing and running code.

We are adding Ruby support soon, including step through debugging and gem
support. We have webdav support and we'll soon support mounting your drive on
your local machine for external applications to access your files.

For now, try Cloud9 for your open source projects and see how you like it.
There are many more features to come in the coming weeks and months.

~~~
mdasen
So, the one thing that you didn't answer was the difference between a
"project" and a "workspace" if there is one. I do have hobby things that
aren't open source where 50 cents per day would be doable, if unwelcome.
However, if it's 50 cents per day per project, that can add up pretty fast and
$55/mo isn't a trivial cost considering that I can run my development and test
stuff off my machine (granted, with the caveat of having to do all the
annoying setup myself).

I'll probably get an account for open-source later today to play around with,
but if your Ruby stuff is really good (when it lands) and works well for
collaboration, I could easily justify $15/mo to my boss and sometimes one
isn't trying to create the solution for every cheap hobbyist out there. It can
be good to be the Basecamp of IDEs and maybe that's how you should sell it (in
contrast to my comparisons to Eclipse and RubyMine).

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amurmann
39 Euro/month?! As an individual developer I get Rubymine for $69 and can use
it as much as I want. What's up with the per day pricing? Who wants to pay his
IDE + workspace on a n per day basis? This is about the strangest pricing I've
ever seen.

~~~
javruben
Well, the idea is this: Normally you have all your stuff on your own computer.
You'll install all the software you need, like your database and runtimes and
any SDK. With Cloud9 all that stuff lives in the Cloud. It's hosted and it's
accessible for you from anywhere.

So, like any cloud service, the hosting costs money. We are offering this for
free when you work on open source projects. But when you are doing a
commercial project for a customer and you like the benefits of being in the
cloud with not only your editor, but your entire test environment, then you
pay something for it. One of the advantages of cloud services is that you have
flexibility, so with the pay per day we offer the flexibility to only pay for
the use of the platform when you need it. Our thought is that if you're doing
a project that makes you a couple of hundred dollars a day, 50 cents for the
editor is not much if it saves you a lot of time.

With that said, we still have some way to go before all the time savers we
have planned are in Cloud9. We're working on a very cool Git UI, great
deployment integration and many many other features. More important for you is
the Ruby support that is upcoming, including step through debugging. In the
mean time use cloud9 for your open source projects and see how it feels for
you.

~~~
sgrove
Best of luck javruben - you'll have a lot of haters who won't understand the
value prop, so you have a lot of difficult marketing ahead of you.

I thought about going into this market awhile ago, but there's a huge battle
to be fought against ~20 year old editors that have been around the block and
have become an external growth to some developers.

That said, you guys are headed in the right direction, good job charging and
getting honest feedback on the utility so early. I just hope you're able to
differentiate between 'features' and 'benefits' while going forward.

------
riffic
This is based on ACE, which was formerly known as Skywriter, or Mozilla
Bespin.

<http://ace.ajax.org/>

<http://c9.io/about.html>

~~~
pcwalton
Sorta. There were actually three Skywriters: Bespin prototype (Thunderhead-
based), Bespin Reboot (SproutCore/jQuery-based), and ACE. ACE postdates the
rename from Bespin to Skywriter. They originated as three completely separate
codebases, although there's been a fair amount of cross-pollination.

ACE didn't begin as a Mozilla project, although it was finally chosen as the
basis on which to build Skywriter the product (which will be used for the
Firefox Add-ons Builder, in particular).

------
AshMokhberi
I spotted issues with the signup process yesterday, the guys have done a good
job of chatting to me on twitter to try and resolve the issue, so thumbs up.

On a separate note, I agree with the comments about the per day pricing. It is
a little confusing and I would rather just see a monthly subscription cost,
with a few plan variants based on # of projects and users. Your making me
think to hard about paying for something when I have to start calculating how
much it will cost me. You should definitely consider simplifying it.

I disagree with the comments around pricing though. I think that estimated
cost is well worth not having hassle, and when you consider it to the cost of
say your mobile phone bill. Just ask which do you use the most, more
importantly which one is making you the money in the first place.

If I'm honest I think the pricing is a on the low side, However I wouldn't
limit the free plan to "open-source" projects either. Depending on how you are
quantifying open source. If you require a public github repo then I would
potentially suggest it's a bad thing. People need chance to use your IDE for a
project to see if they are willing to pay. Allowing only say one or two
projects makes more sense I think.

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estel
The site (awesomely) says that most of the code powering it is openly
available on Github (<https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9>) - out of interest,
which parts have you developed separately for your service?

~~~
shii
Pretty cool, I have it running[1] on my box now, but I can't seem to figure
out what the Run feature is supposed to..I'm guessing run the code in the
second pane, but it's not clear with no docs...Also, is this designed to
execute only for Javascript? Your site at <http://c9.io> is down and I don't
see anything in Google cache so I can't read up there either.

[1]: <http://awesomescreenshot.com/0a28fjb51>

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vyrotek
Reminds me of <http://www.coderun.com> which supports C#, PHP, JavaScript,
HTML and CSS. (and is free)

I'm curious to know what I get for this paid version? Is it mostly the Git
support?

~~~
javruben
A difference is that we support actual step through debugging for javascript.
Indeed git support is another differentiator. Our Git UI will be released
shortly too. We have a pluggable architecture to very easily extend cloud9
with new features. We are working with many developer oriented companies to
add their services and tooling to Cloud9. Our aim for Cloud9 is to provide a
full PaaS for software development in the cloud.

------
joakin
Going to <http://cloud9ide.com/contact.html> gives the google maps api key
warning, you should fix that.

By the way, beautiful design in both page and product. Really really awesome.

~~~
sergimansilla
Thanks for the heads up, we are fixing it right now!

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antihero
Does it support textmate/sublime style syntax highlighting?

How do I actually get it to do anything? Clicking on a github project in the
list does nothing.

Ok, I clicked fork (I don't think this is intuitive at all, why would you want
to fork your own projects?), and I'm editing code.

Things that would prohibit me from using it:

* Can't upload my own tmTheme files.

* Cant't seem to change font, ignores my browser's "monospaced" selection. Why?

* Can I select branch somehow? This is not obvious. Perhaps in the project pane?

So far it's pretty frustrating in all fairness, and whilst it's a cool idea,
wouldn't really make me switch from Sublime Text + Cyberduck.

~~~
javruben
When you are on your own computer, you clone from github to edit your project.
See cloud9 as your own computer, but then in the cloud, accessible from
anywhere. It should say 'clone' instead of 'fork' though. We'll change that.

\- Themes: There is a converter script already in the open source project of
Cloud9 on github. We'll add a way to upload your own themes soon.

\- Font: Good suggestion. I'll add this to the feature todo list.

\- Git: There is full git command line support. We're working on a Git UI,
that's coming soon.

Thanks for the feedback, we know it's still early, but we're adding features
very quickly.

~~~
antihero
Thanks for the reply. I do like the idea and it is interesting. I'll look into
Cloud9's OSS project as it would be really useful to have, for instance,
Cloud9 installed on a development server, then be able to login from anywhere
and edit the code (though security wise it could be hazardous).

------
melvinram
It's still buggy:

* Sometimes when loading a project, it gets stuck at "Loading..."

* When editing a file, sometimes the Enter button doesn't return. It works if I hold the Enter key down but then it adds a ton of returns.

* The buttons on the right don't really do anything yet, except for the collaborators section. There isn't a label or hint box so I'm not sure what exactly they are for.

With that said, I love the idea of this and really want this to become a
viable alternative to Textmate + desktop development, which will hopefully
improve the pace and standard at which progress happens.

Looking forward to Ruby support.

~~~
javruben
Thanks for the reports Melvin. We're fixing the project loading. I haven't
been able to reproduce the stuck Enter button yet. The buttons on the right
are used for debugging. I'll make sure we'll add some tooltips on them.

~~~
mcrittenden
There are a couple places in the CSS where Tahoma or Trebuchet MS are given as
the font families without any fallbacks - lots of us linux folks don't have
fonts like Tahoma, so an Arial or Verdana fallback would be nice so we don't
see our ugly default serif fonts.

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manche
This page --> <http://c9.io/signin.html> doesn't load for me (except for the
banner) in: Google Chrome 9.0.597.98, WinXP

Works on Firefox.

~~~
sergimansilla
Works over here on Chrome 10 but thanks for reporting, we will try to
reproduce your environment and fix it!

------
bwindels
The homepage doesn't work for me on safari 5.0.3 on mac. The "I say what's
this" link doesn't do anything and none of the screenshots on the bottom of
the page are visible. I thought the page was like that and was anxiously
looking for screenshots.

The webkit inspector reports the following error: apf_release.js:1 TypeError:
Result of expression 'this.$ext' [null] is not an object.

------
tluyben2
I like these kind of projects/efforts and it looks great, but this thing is
quite buggy. And some parts, like the sign up process might not even be buggy
but just bad workflow.

And it's too expensive IMHO. You need to make money, but for what it offers
now, at least to me, it's not worth it.

Other than that, hopefully you'll improve it and make it a real online IDE.

~~~
sergimansilla
We just launched, and we are trying to squash every bug we run into. Could you
be more specific about the 'buggy' part you mention? Some particulars about it
would really help us to make it better, we would really appreciate it!

~~~
tluyben2
This is probably more usability than a bug, but when I clicked from HN to the
site, I clicked on login without checking the rest of the screen, as usually
the login screen contains some link to register. These days i'm used to, when
I see a 'sign in with xxx' (oAuth) that login / register do the same thing,
even if you don't have an account.

To me it felt a bit unstable because of this. Although it's a matter of
reading everything on the screen, I would be surprised if anyone actually does
that, so probably better to change the flow in that case.

Anyway, after that I entered a Github url (naive as I am) which is private,
but in my Github account with which I'm signed up to Cloud9IDE. I got a not so
user friendly popup saying an error occured, with a key and some JSON
included.

So I concluded I cannot use private repositories (?) and clicked on the + to
add a new project, typed in Test and clicked create. I clicked open source in
the follow up dialog and no extra users. After clicking next it suddenly said
'Forking, this could take a few seconds'. I thought; what is it forking? This
is an empty project. Then another popup with about the same error as before.
It appeared that even though I created a fresh, empty project, it took my
GIThub URL and tried to use that! So instead of my 'Test' empty project, it
now showed the name of my private project from Github, with no files in it.

Any comments on the pricing btw? EDIT: nevermind, answered while I was typing
this.

------
acabal
A small nitpick on the landing page: your testimonial should have the opening
quotation mark as a &ldquo; and the closing quotation mark as an &rdquo;.
Right now they're both &rdquo; and it looks a little strange.

------
wiredfool
I'm getting a sky blue screen of nothingness on dashboard.html after signing
in via github. Chrome 9.0.597.107 on Snow Leopard.

When going back to it again, the front sign in with github link tells me that
someone already has my user id.

~~~
jammus
I got the same. Just click the 'sign in' link at the top, then 'Sign in with
Github' and it should take you to your account.

~~~
wiredfool
Yah, though that just gets me back to the sky blue screen of nothingness.

~~~
javruben
We're seeing this as well. The problems are being investigated.

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nonames
'Sign in with Github' is broken. I get an error message:

    
    
        User '<myusername>' already used for another account.
    

Really? There is no way for me to link my Github account then?

------
wladimir
Very nice idea! It seems to me, editing and launching code without having to
install anything locally can be very handy in some cases.

One question about security: Does it support HTTPS?

~~~
sergimansilla
It doesn't yet, but it will be supported very soon, we are working on it!

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JohnTitus
How well does it do with non-javascript code? If I could code ruby on rails on
it, and deploy from w/in it to Heroku, I'd sign up today. (happy feature
creep!)

~~~
sergimansilla
We are working on it. We aim to support all the major languages and their
popular frameworks soon. For now you have syntax highlighting for Ruby and
more languages, which combined with GitHub integration already makes it a
sweet platform to develop on.

~~~
silverbax88
Does that include MS languages (C#, etc.?)

~~~
javruben
We are looking into Mono Support, but we don't have a date set for this on the
roadmap.

~~~
defrex

      we don't have a date set for this on the roadmap

Read: _never going to happen_

~~~
sergimansilla
It will happen, but there are many languages out there, each with its own
runtimes, debuggers, etc. We are first focusing on making the IDE solid and
stable, and then we will focus on what people want. In fact, thanks to the
work done by the Mono guys C#/F# shouldn't be difficult to get working, but
for now there are more important hings to do.

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mcastner
I was just thinking about something like this a few weeks ago, mostly the Git
integration being a killer feature. Good luck!

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kpozin
What about basic IDE functionality such as folding, code/content assist, etc.?

~~~
Lennie
Cloud9IDE is based on Ace*

Ace does not yet support code folding I think.

It was discussed as possible feature but not yet implemented as far as I know:
[http://groups.google.com/group/cloud9-ide/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/cloud9-ide/browse_thread/thread/89c115d98e2d8a7b)

*an open source project based on the work from the people at Cloud9IDE (ajax.org) and Mozilla (Bespin / SkyWriter

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olalonde
Wasn't Cloud9 open source? I can't find any link to the source code.

~~~
javruben
here it is: <http://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9>

