5 ms·

Out of curiosity, why would you want a web-based text editor?

by edanm 16y ago

apu 16y ago
If you're frequently on-the-go, without your own laptop? If you're on a restricted machine where you can't install anything, or have other install restrictions (hello, iPad! ;-))? If you're on a shared computer where it wouldn't be nice to overwrite someone else's config files? If you're on a mobile device? If it allowed you do stuff that would be difficult or impossible to do with a local text editor? Like editing and testing web code live, without even perhaps a "save" command? [Note: I'm not the OP and I don't actually want a web-based text editor for myself, but these are reasons that came to me in the first 2 minutes of thinking about it.]
- astine 16y ago
  Google Docs works for a couple of those. Emacs, and I'm sure other editors, can do the last one.
- slashcom 16y ago
  I vote ssh + (vim|emacs) for most of those situations.
- nailer 16y ago
  I am an the OP, and you've covered it nicely. :-)
jasonkester 16y ago
I rolled my own little web IDE back in the day so that I could build out a PHP project while backpacking around the world. Part of that was a text editor that handled block indenting correctly and corrected for TEXTAREA's annoying way of dealing with doubleclicks to select text. It was actually pretty nice, traveling without a laptop and simply dropping into an internet cafe and firing up any browser to get to work. Naturally, the main issue was that you could only use interpreted languages like PHP with it. Django and Rails weren't even on the horizon at that point, so once I conclusively proved to myself that PHP is just not worth the hassle, I picked up a fast laptop and a copy of VS.NET and haven't looked back.
sanderjd 16y ago
Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you? We don't think twice about Google docs being a good idea, or a thousand other things that were once thought to be purely desktop applications, why should coding be any different? I think it's very striking how few good editors there are on the web, and no real IDEs (that I know of).
- edanm 16y ago
  I wouldn't because: 1. You need a lot of computing power for editors/IDEs. You want things to happen instantly, and that usually isn't the case with web-based stuff. 2. Browsers haven't reached the point where you can make really great editors in them. 3. You're usually dealing with local files, and browser-based editors wouldn't do well with that (you have to have local files because there are a lot of files, you need to compile them, etc.). 4. When I sit down to program, I usually sit down on a computer I own which has a lot of very specific programs and a very specific environment. This includes, but is not limited to, the editor. I can't do web dev these days without having Firefox + Firebug installed, not to mention having Python/Django installed for most of my projects, etc. So having a web-based editor won't help me in programming on other machines anyway.
  - sanderjd 16y ago
    Thanks for sating my curiosity! Some interesting points. 1. Not sure I agree here, I'd have to see some benchmarks of similar types of operations in local editors and javascript, but I think it should be roughly equivalent to, say, Eclipse's java-driven interface. 2. I think this is a good point, but I wonder what it is they don't yet have. "Can make really great editors in them" is a pretty vague requirement. 3. I personally think this is historical baggage. There is no reason the server hosting the editor (or another server communicated with that server) could not host your files. Hell, most open source projects are already done this way, hosted on github/sourceforge/etc. - downloading the project locally would be an unnecessary step if the code-hosters offered solid editing options. 4. This is probably the main point, to me. It's not enough to just edit through the web, because there are too many other things you need to do as well, which are even more difficult to detach from a local machine.

Out of curiosity, why would you want a web-based text editor?

by edanm 16y ago

Out of curiosity, why would you want a web-based text editor?

apu 16y ago

If you're frequently on-the-go, without your own laptop? If you're on a restricted machine where you can't install anything, or have other install restrictions (hello, iPad! ;-))? If you're on a shared computer where it wouldn't be nice to overwrite someone else's config files? If you're on a mobile device? If it allowed you do stuff that would be difficult or impossible to do with a local text editor? Like editing and testing web code live, without even perhaps a "save" command? [Note: I'm not the OP and I don't actually want a web-based text editor for myself, but these are reasons that came to me in the first 2 minutes of thinking about it.]

astine 16y ago
Google Docs works for a couple of those. Emacs, and I'm sure other editors, can do the last one.
slashcom 16y ago
I vote ssh + (vim|emacs) for most of those situations.
nailer 16y ago
I am an the OP, and you've covered it nicely. :-)

jasonkester 16y ago

I rolled my own little web IDE back in the day so that I could build out a PHP project while backpacking around the world. Part of that was a text editor that handled block indenting correctly and corrected for TEXTAREA's annoying way of dealing with doubleclicks to select text. It was actually pretty nice, traveling without a laptop and simply dropping into an internet cafe and firing up any browser to get to work. Naturally, the main issue was that you could only use interpreted languages like PHP with it. Django and Rails weren't even on the horizon at that point, so once I conclusively proved to myself that PHP is just not worth the hassle, I picked up a fast laptop and a copy of VS.NET and haven't looked back.

sanderjd 16y ago

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you? We don't think twice about Google docs being a good idea, or a thousand other things that were once thought to be purely desktop applications, why should coding be any different? I think it's very striking how few good editors there are on the web, and no real IDEs (that I know of).

edanm 16y ago
I wouldn't because: 1. You need a lot of computing power for editors/IDEs. You want things to happen instantly, and that usually isn't the case with web-based stuff. 2. Browsers haven't reached the point where you can make really great editors in them. 3. You're usually dealing with local files, and browser-based editors wouldn't do well with that (you have to have local files because there are a lot of files, you need to compile them, etc.). 4. When I sit down to program, I usually sit down on a computer I own which has a lot of very specific programs and a very specific environment. This includes, but is not limited to, the editor. I can't do web dev these days without having Firefox + Firebug installed, not to mention having Python/Django installed for most of my projects, etc. So having a web-based editor won't help me in programming on other machines anyway.
- sanderjd 16y ago
  Thanks for sating my curiosity! Some interesting points. 1. Not sure I agree here, I'd have to see some benchmarks of similar types of operations in local editors and javascript, but I think it should be roughly equivalent to, say, Eclipse's java-driven interface. 2. I think this is a good point, but I wonder what it is they don't yet have. "Can make really great editors in them" is a pretty vague requirement. 3. I personally think this is historical baggage. There is no reason the server hosting the editor (or another server communicated with that server) could not host your files. Hell, most open source projects are already done this way, hosted on github/sourceforge/etc. - downloading the project locally would be an unnecessary step if the code-hosters offered solid editing options. 4. This is probably the main point, to me. It's not enough to just edit through the web, because there are too many other things you need to do as well, which are even more difficult to detach from a local machine.