Slashdot Mirror

What if you also develop and test on the cloud on the same platform as your hosting environment? Might that be the reason Amazon bought Cloud9 http://c9.io/

• Cloud9: Excellent, full feature Linux/Web development tool you access from a browser, anywhere
• Inoreader: This is the replacement for the departed Google Reader. Excellent
• Adobe Creative Cloud: OK, full disclosure, I get it free through work. But I'd still pay for it anyway if I had to

Try this: http://rawgit.com/pdfernhout/P...

You can enter the below short JavaScript script in the text box, and then push the "View Below" button to create a new div for the window which will pop up the alert as part of displaying itself.

    <script>
    alert("hello");
    </script>

If you enter a Data ID for the text and a User ID for yourself (can be almost anything) and click "Store" you will store that text in the web browser's local storage.

I wrote that about a year ago. It works under Firefox on Mac OS 10.6. It may not work as well elsewhere; for example Firefox under Win7 didn't work for some reasons when I tried it yesterday (but probably a minor error to fix). I do not know how it will perform on most mobile systems, but again, in theory, it should work or otherwise be relatively easy to fix. Here is the source code with more information:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

You can also enter any HTML you want there, like to create buttons or divs or anything you want. Examples can be loaded by imported the text below into the editor using "Import and Merge" and then you can click "List all IDs" and select an item like "polar clock" to view it below (that example is a graphical clock, written by someone else using D3):
https://raw.githubusercontent....

A different approach to doing something like that if you are willing to host a NodeJS server somewhere is this other code I wrote:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

However, if you go that route, there are quite a few web services that support remote coding through the browser on hosted platforms. For example, "Cloud 9":
https://c9.io/

I've been using a Chromebook for a while. I am a web developer. This particular machine does not have Crouton or a standard Linux distribution on it, just the stock OS. I would probably have opted for one of those, but this machine has a broken power button, which prevents it from being put into developer mode. So far I have not run into any insurmountable problems, and I think overall that it has been an improvement in my workflow.

Chrome OS has a number of useful features. The longest part of rebooting or updating the machine is waiting for your browser tabs to reload. You may say that this is uncommon and that you don't care how long it takes, but on the other hand no one will miss that wait time either. Having files backed up automatically is quite pleasant. If and when you are in the unfortunate position of having a machine die on you, sitting down to any Chromebook and typing in your password will restore your files, bookmarks, browser history, desktop background, and all installed programs in a couple minutes. The biggest downside is printing; it's possible if you have another computer or a Cloud Print ready printer (yeah right), but it's not fun under any circumstances.

Tips:

• Install Gmail Offline
• Enable offline editing of Docs
• Enable tap to drag
• These are kinda useful too.

Either Google Docs or Office Online do a pretty good job of handling office tasks, with one exception: neither will open a password-protected excel spreadsheet. For that I have been using RollApp, which does exactly what it says on the tin but is a bit slow. For web development, Chrome OS includes an SSH client. You don't need more than a VPS and vim, do you? You do? Well, in that case, you should be more than happy with Cloud9 Web-based IDE (Chrome Store link). You get your own little linux environment for each workspace, already set up for various development tasks. The editor is pretty similar to Sublime Text, and cloning projects from GitHub is fast and easy. You can also connect to a private VPS and do whatever crazy things you like there. Loading up a workspace restores all opened files and terminal windows, including any terminal programs/output. Run your tests, close the window, come back a week later, and the test output is still there. If you happened to be exploring something using a CLI interactive interpreter, that will still be running when you get back to it. Also, the workspaces are separate instances: developing locally I would always have to set up a new user, add it to the www-data group, set up its own fcgi pool, add an entry in /etc/hosts, and so on and so forth. Setting up lxc or nspawn containers makes this marginally easier. Letting your IDE handle it for you is brilliant.

Using a Chromebook does not mean giving up your ability to use (or create) complex software, but you will have to change your workflow. There is probably a fair amount of software that is not available on the web or even via SSH, but I think that most people's needs would be satisfied. I left my other Chromebook lying around the house for the roomies to use, and I don't think any of them noticed that it wasn't running Windows -- probably never used it for anything but web browsing. Your IT professional may need a XAMP stack, but he doesn't necessarily need it on a local machine, and there are some real advantages to not doing so, even if you skip the cloud-based IDE and just do a VM.

I have no connection to any company listed above except as a satisfied user.

Can the students even install and use a proper compiler or something like AutoCAD? Photoshop?

How many school kids have a daily need for AutoCAD or Photoshop? I'd imagine only a tiny percentage. So why should a school district equip elementary and middle school kids with a computer powerful enough for tasks that only a small minority of their high-school students need? Would it not be better to give something more powerful (and much more expensive) to just those with the specialist need for something more powerful?

As for a compiler, they could use something like Cloud 9 for cloud based developing.

"I don't know of another code editor with this feature."

Cloud 9 IDE, a webbased IDE, does:
https://c9.io/site/features/

It's also an open source project:

https://github.com/ajaxorg/cloud9/

There are other I believe.

So if you already know HTML/CSS, why not learn Javascript? Use a web IDE if you can't install anything locally. http://c9.io/

• Cloud9 IDE"
• Compilr.com"
• Cloud IDE"

http://c9.io/