21 ms·

Vscode.dev

803 points by connor4312 5y ago

LatencyKills 5y ago
I was an engineer on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft from 2002-2009. If you had told me it would eventually run in a web browser I would have thought your were crazy. Back then we had to work closely with the core Windows team (memory optimizations, etc.) just so that it could run natively on a semi-beefy PC. I'm pumped that the team has been able to pull this off!
ramon 5y ago
Dream come true! Congrats!
me_im_counting 5y ago
I wonder if there will be better remote development support on vscode.dev? It used to work well for me, but in recent releases the remote functionality has gotten so flaky...
jcmontx 5y ago
I love it! Great job MSFT.
divbzero 5y ago
> Develop on your iPad. You can upload/download files (and even store them in the cloud using the Files app), as well as open repositories remotely with the built-in GitHub Repositories extension. With web apps, I’m always curious how well they support offline use. In this case, https://vscode.dev/ https://vscode.dev/ appears to do pretty well. You can “Add to Home Screen” on iPad and get the app working fullscreen with WiFi off.
yooogle 5y ago
Nice, but saving is a bit odd.
sisjohn 5y ago
One thing that I love about VSCode is the flexibility that it offers. Also, my favorite theme, Synthwave, really makes your editor looks amazing.
MR4D 5y ago
I find a couple things pretty neat here: 1 - All of the screenshots are from a Mac. This never would have happened with the old MSFT. 2 - The performance of this is pretty good. Admittedly, I just played with this for a couple minutes, but even opening a folder with a bunch of files was snappy.
- dustinmoris 5y ago
  This is because Microsoft doesn't seem to want Windows developers to use VS Code. They want to keep them locked into Visual Studio and Windows Azure, which is why the C# plugin is one of the worst from all language plugins in Code.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    That's a pretty strange implication. I just tried opening up a .NET Core application in VS Code developed exclusively in Visual Studio, and it fired right up. Now I certainly wouldn't say that the debugging experience is as good as VS, but nobody should expect it to be. VS Code isn't supposed to be a replacement for VS, although it can certainly hold it's own. And it's free.
    - imafish 5y ago
      VS community is also free :)
      - jaywalk 5y ago
        Yes, but it has a very significant licensing restriction that prevents it from being used to develop commercial software. VS Code has no such restriction.
        jongalloway2 5y ago
        A little oversimplified - Visual Studio Community can be used to develop commercial software, with restrictions to (summarizing) 5 conccurrent users in non-enterprise organizations. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/mlt031819/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/mlt031819/
up6w6 5y ago
Not open-source yet, the best alternatives for self-hosting right now are: https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server Update: also check the discussion about their differences https://github.com/cdr/code-server/discussions/4267 https://github.com/cdr/code-server/discussions/4267 (IMO both are much slower and worse than vscode.dev)
- factorialboy 5y ago
  +1 for GitPod .. Stellar integration with GitLab as well for CI / automation They claim Github integration as well (although I have not tried that yet).
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Geoff from Gitpod here. GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket are 1st class citizens. In time I’d like to see Gitpod extend support for sourcehut, cgit, gogs and gitea but we haven’t got around to it yet. Fortunately Gitpod is indeed opensource so anyone in the community could send in a pull-request and add support for the context parser. Come join the discord at https://www.gitpod.io/chat https://www.gitpod.io/chat #contributing channel.
- combatdisinfo 5y ago
  >IMO both are much slower and worse than vscode.dev This just... doesn't make sense other than browser differences and the resources of the server actually running Code. Is the free trial of GitPod slow because it's running in a resource-constrained environment. Sure. (edit: let me be clear, GitPod is an amazing end-to-end experience and they have a very generous free tier for OSS projects/users, but it IS free unless you pay). Is self-hosted GitPod or code-server slower than VSCode? Not enough that I can notice when they're side-by-side looking identical, I can't tell which is which. In fact, I would challenge a single person to show me a side-by-side version-to-version comparison that shows VSCode.dev or VSCode native being significantly faster than code-serevr given that they're virtually the exact same thing running in Chromium instead of ... Chromium/Electron. (On an unrelated note, when even CloudFlare can switch to HCaptcha, and HN can't... well, I guess it's in line with the amount of technical care this place gets all-around.)
ARandumGuy 5y ago
This seems really cool, and seems like it took a lot of man hours to put together. However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode. The browser version will always be a compromised experience, given the inherent limitations of browser applications. Even if it works 99% of the time, that 1% would add enough friction to make it more of a hassle then it's worth. The post gave some use cases involving hardware that can't easily run Desktop VSCode (e.g. iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. If there are some use cases I'm missing, I'd love to hear about them! This is a pretty new concept, and I certainly don't know how everyone likes to code. But from my perspective, I struggle to see any situation where someone would choose to use this, and few situations where someone would have to.
- patrickserrano 5y ago
  Honestly, this looks amazing for times when I'm in a meeting and want to look a piece of more complex code but don't have a local copy of the repo. The Azure DevOps repo UI leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you know where a piece of code is called from but don't know where it's defined off the top of your head.
- canada_dry 5y ago
  > I'm not sure who this is for. Especially since many extensions are incompatible.
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  > iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. A number of schools dispatch iPads and Chromebooks to their students. They can hook a keyboard and a mouse, and with vscode.dev they now have a decent dev machine. Sure parents could buy a windows/linux/macos laptop, but outside of the cost, maintenance is not trivial (parents wishing to restrict access to whatever resource will have a harder time) To push a bit farther, there are pretty powerful and usable Chromebooks, and iPads are now on par with most laptop when it comes to processing power, especially JS. Extending their role to be able to code a bunch is nothing to sneeze at.
n8cpdx 5y ago
Very cool stuff. I remember being at Build 2018 and asking the PM on the Live Share team if they had any plans to bring VS Code to the browser. Maybe do managed environments for labs and companies (what GitHub code spaces now is), would be great for education. Lots of students (especially non-CS nerds, like the physics kids with a CS requirement) find environment setup to be one of the hardest parts. He seemed to think I was a piece of shit for not ‘getting’ what Live Share was all about and how those other offerings (code spaces, running in the browser without install) were bad ideas not worth considering. I think the moral of the story is, if you’re a PM, don’t treat your most enthusiastic customers like shit. Or maybe do, because it won’t actually have business impact.
- godot 5y ago
  Just a side note... as a CS nerd and a software engineer with 15+ years of professional experience, environment setup is still one of the hardest parts for me, especially if I'm picking up a new tech stack.
  - Graffur 5y ago
    It's tedious because you'll always run into an error even if following documentation. Automated dev environment setup ftw
- shuntress 5y ago
  > "Lots of students (especially non-CS nerds, like the physics kids with a CS requirement) find environment setup to be one of the hardest parts." Advice I received early that has stuck with me (and that I have found to be true): "Environment setup is the hardest part". This was true for me in school and has remained true through multiple professional teams.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Heya, Geoff from Gitpod here. > Maybe do managed environments for labs and companies (what GitHub code spaces now is), would be great for education. I agree. There is an entire class of problems that attendees and educators continue to put up with when they shouldn’t need to because these concerns can be removed through automation. I dumped my thoughts about this over at https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code
OliverGilan 5y ago
I wonder if this uses pretty much the exact same code as the desktop version. It seems to me that one of the big benefits of using Electron would be to have one codebase deployable as a desktop app and a website with very little change for each deployment.
- minimaxir 5y ago
  See https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server which has that design philosophy.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  It's going to use most of the frontend UI code but all of the NodeJS-specific stuff in the desktop version is a no-go and has to be shimmed or polyfilled to run in the browser. The biggest thing you lose here is system-level access like the ability to run processes--tests, terminals, debugging, etc. And as the blog post mentions unfortunately these things aren't supported yet in vscode.dev.
dudus 5y ago
> quickly parked it (...) (or, if you are from the Boston area like me, we "pahked it" What a strange joke to include on Developer docs.
- judge2020 5y ago
  This is on /blogs and has an author under the title of the post.
- aptxkid 5y ago
  Proud to be a Bostonian!
- aydwi 5y ago
  Yeah what a shame...I too prefer to pretend like a robot on this forum.
minimaxir 5y ago
For those who think web-based IDEs are inefficient, I recommend giving VS Code in the browser a try: nowadays it's just as performant as it is on the desktop. Even on the iPad it's just as performant (with 120Hz scrolling!), although as noted in the announcement, the file system limitations make it a bit of a pain to work with for ad hoc coding.
- brundolf 5y ago
  There would be no performance difference (at least at the UI layer) between a web app running in the browser and the same web app running in Electron, so this doesn't really demonstrate anything new WRT performance
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Geoff here from Gitpod. My primary development machine is an iPad after I bricked my M1 laptop. I’m currently out in the middle of no-where of Australia with my van so I’m all in. Even when I get my M1 fixed I’m likely to keep my thin client device for hipsters as my primary development machine. See https://ghuntley.com/anywhere https://ghuntley.com/anywhere for tips and tricks.
  - daqhris 5y ago
    Thanks for your link. I can only imagine a future where remote dev work is the new norm. As the rest of society discovers the joys of working from anywhere, such browser-based coding innovations are helpful to on-board new curious developers. We no longer need costly setups/desktops to run very useful software like VSCode. After seeing this post, I started searching for a cheap and good tablet which led me to a soon-to-be released Android tablet from Nokia (less than 250€). Tablets are trending again! Coupled with other existing affordable solutions like Termux and Git, software development will attract more people regardless of personal background/status/location. We won't be seen as hipsters for long. I am heading towards making life changes similar to yours (hopefully after Santa delivers his gifts on-time), so I feel grateful that you shared your experience.
- johnday 5y ago
beebeepka 5y ago
> we "pahked it" It took almost 30 years to finally get comfortable with the way native, mostly British, speakers pronounce R. It still doesn't feel right but I no longer fight. I can still picture myself yelling my hard Rs at Google translate and it consistently failing to understand me. Somewhat more on topic: I just realized I've been using nothing but Viscose for 2 years now. Still not as good as WebStorm but it's getting there. It wasn't nearly as good back in 2017. Not sure I want it to be just a tab in my browser thought. Very cool nonetheless. We've come a long way
tracnar 5y ago
It seems to be like Theia https://theia-ide.org/ https://theia-ide.org/ which is based on vscode and runs in the browser. It's used by this project to give a full lab/workspace and ide in the cloud:https://www.eclipse.org/che/ https://www.eclipse.org/che/ (it's actually closer to vscode even though eclipse is in the name).
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Yo. Last night Gitpod’s IDE architect (one of the key folks behind Theia) did a great blog post on the history of cloud IDE’s over at https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  No theia has a nodejs server backing its web experience. This vscode.dev is an entirely client side JS application that runs in your browser--there's no backend server beyond something to serve a pile of static JS and html.
  - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
    Is this true about vscode.dev? This was the first question I had while reading the blogpost: Do all my local files stay on my machine or do they get uploaded to a remote server?
    - qbasic_forever 5y ago
      The blog post says it's using a brand new local file access API only in cutting edge browsers (edge and chrome) so you can access the files on your machine directly from the browser. There is no server upload of anything.
  - tracnar 5y ago
    Ah yes that's cool, they mention even the Python extension can run client-side.
louissan 5y ago
yeah. no.
tiffanyh 5y ago
>"Fast forward to today. Now when you go to https://vscode.dev https://vscode.dev, you'll be presented with a lightweight version of VS Code running fully in the browser." Does that imply there is functionality missing from the online version of VS Code?
- meibo 5y ago
  If you were to continue reading, you would be informed that many of the non-web languages don't have the same support in this version, since it can't run native language servers/any extensions that use OS-level APIs.
- easton 5y ago
  Mostly anything that relies on having a real system attached to it instead of the browser JS engine. Running code, or a terminal, or things that rely on the git binary. Lots of extensions are working to remove their dependencies on the local system though.
  - tiffanyh 5y ago
    So these limitations don't exist for Codespaces then?
    - easton 5y ago
      They do not.
- lucasmullens 5y ago
  Some extensions aren't available, such as GitLens.
  - JimiofEden 5y ago
    Yeah, the first thing I tried was to install some Go extensions. I guess they'll need to have separate web versions (or some sort of extra qualifiers)
alexnewman 5y ago
I've been using codespaces for a while. now my copilot doeasn't work there.
thurn 5y ago
I've love to see this for open source, especially integrated into GitHub. A simple "click here to contribute" button could really lower the barrier to entry for first-timers.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  This has been around for a year now: https://github.com/features/codespaces https://github.com/features/codespaces
- fetzu 5y ago
  I’m not sure if I am understanding your post correctly, but AFAIK you can just hit “.” from your browser on GitHub and it opens an editor (based on VSCode) for that repo. Not sure if Git is fully integrated in there (although, it being based on VSCode, it should).
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    Yes, just hitting dot in Github opens up Github.dev which is very similar to this VSCode.dev. So similar that this VSCode.dev lets you get the same experience if you rewrite a Github.com repo URLs and prefix it with VSCode.dev. Today VSCode.dev also supports the same thing with Azure Repos if you prefix dev.azure.com repo URLs. The "remote repository" experience on VSCode.dev is a little more involved than just "fully integrated git" (it relies on the GitHub/Azure Repos APIs and existing VS Code extensions with Remoting support for some of it beyond just what raw git can provied), but they say in this article that it is extendable and they can and hope to add other providers in the future.
- dolmen 5y ago
  https://github.dev/ https://github.dev/
ravenstine 5y ago
This is exactly what I've been looking for. There was another site (forget the name, something-something-cloud) that supposedly did this but it seems abandoned and didn't work on any browser that I used. An online VS Code would not only make doing quick things with GitHub repos much easier but can be great for people just getting into learning programming because it doesn't require installing anything, but you are essentially starting out with a professional tool. That and every once in a while I'm not on my own computer thus it would be pretty nice to kill time coding with a VS Code instance that doesn't need installation.
- tiffanyh 5y ago
  You might be thinking of https://coder.com https://coder.com >"Code-server is the primary open source project we maintain. It allows developers to use a browser to access remote dev environments running VS Code"
- pjot 5y ago
  Was it cloud9?[0] I remember this from a few years ago, but it seems like it was killed after they were acquired by AWS. [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/ https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/
tckerr 5y ago
I would love to be able to pop this open for prototyping simple python/js scripts, but the lack of "run" support makes that much less feasible. Curious to see where the next iterations go.
riquito 5y ago
What api is it using to let you create a file in a local directory? I know about https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem but that's for virtualized filesystems
- tkzed49 5y ago
  confusingly called the File System Access API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
- yunohn 5y ago
  They’ve literally linked it at first mention - https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/File_System_Acces... .
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Web file system access API, it's only in edge and chrome right now unfortunately: https://web.dev/file-system-access/ https://web.dev/file-system-access/
- Macha 5y ago
  The File System Access API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System... e.g. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/showDirectoryPicker https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/show... will give you access to a handle representing a directory on the user's real file system
qbasic_forever 5y ago
Interesting they're using tree-sitter for syntax highlighting. Obviously they can't run LSPs in the browser so this must have been an alternative. I'd be curious to see this get into mainline desktop VS Code though (and I'm not alone: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/50140 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/50140).
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  The article points out that the Typescript/Javascript and Python LSPs run in the browser providing "better" experience than the tree-sitter experiences for languages without browser capable LSPs today.
- tehlike 5y ago
  why can't they run LSP?
- IshKebab 5y ago
  They don't use tree-sitter for syntax highlighting unless the extension you're using uses it. By default (and almost everything uses the default) VSCode uses the Textmate syntax highlighting system. And there's no reason they can't use the LSP in the browser as long as the actual language servers can run in the browser - pretty easy with most languages these days.
k__ 5y ago
If file access is supported by all browsers, this accompanied with WASM could lead to a new era for web apps.
jt2190 5y ago
It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves compared with other players in this space. (Stackblitz comes to mind. They added support for “WebContainers” recently, for in-browser hosting of server-side code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223012)
peakaboo 5y ago
I don't think this will be a success. If I get to choose between this and my own local installation, of course i will run the local version. Why would I want to sit in the browser? To continue on the same cursor position I was if I switch computer? Not worth it at all.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  It's not competing against local, it's in addition to.
wiradikusuma 5y ago
FYI: You can't run/compile your code (yet), and by extension it means it won't show any error/warning (I tried deleting some lines). I'm guessing the next step is cloud build.
- xnyan 5y ago
  >https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server This may be what you're looking for? An agent runs on the development computer, and you get everything that it has (debugging, compilation, etc).
stared 5y ago
A modern browser environment is an OS on its own. Change my view.
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Yup. See https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code and https://ghuntley.com/anywhere https://ghuntley.com/anywhere
- keyb0ardninja 5y ago
  More like a virtual machine. The javascript virtual machine.
- echelon 5y ago
  You should talk to Suhail Doshi. https://www.mightyapp.com/ https://www.mightyapp.com/
- paxys 5y ago
  That was already the case a long time ago. We have now reached the stage where individual applications running in the browser can be an OS on their own – VS Code itself is a very good example.
artisanspam 5y ago
I was hoping this would be the thing that makes coding on an iPad not awful. But any keyboard shortcuts are consumed by Safari, so it's a pain to use. However, I hope that this enables the VS Code team to make a native iOS/Android VS Code app that would essentially just be a web browser that uses this functionality.
- keyb0ardninja 5y ago
  You can do this right now on android. If you're using chrome/chromium based browser, just visit vscode.dev and then select add to home screen from the browser menu. A similar option exists in firefox on android too, I believe. Once you open the shortcut created from the previous step, it will open the webapp without the browser's UI.
  - jpindar 5y ago
    How did you get Chrome not to hijack right-clicks?
    - keyb0ardninja 5y ago
      I didn't play around with it much. It might have the issues you're facing.
    - judge2020 5y ago
      Do you mean vscode.dev itself hijacking right-clicks to display its context menu[0]? If so, there's this great extension I use to enable it on the myriad of websites that use it for non-alt-context-menu usage[1]. 0: https://i.judge.sh/thirsty/Flutter/chrome_w3SVLELGag.png https://i.judge.sh/thirsty/Flutter/chrome_w3SVLELGag.png 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enable-right-click/hhojmcideegachlhfgfdhailpfhgknjm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enable-right-click...
      - jpindar 5y ago
        Umm... no. I want vscode.dev's context menu.
mseepgood 5y ago
What's the feature that allows a website to open local files and folders? Edit: I think I found it: File System Access API, supported by Chrome and Edge, not supported by Safari and Firefox
- hbn 5y ago
  > supported by Chrome and Edge read: supported by Chrome
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
It's not only an awesome technical achievement, but it has also so much potential to be useful. And yet, something at the back on my head is screaming: WARNING! I have the intuition that, on the long run, using more and more tools that are not on your own machine will create a dependency on systems big companies control. And something tells me we are going to pay for it in the end. So I'll stay away. Maybe I'm getting paranoid, but I don't regret not having ever created a Facebook account, or not getting on the 2010 hype train of magical SAAS services like Firebase that lock you in eventually. We'll see in 10 years I guess.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- blumomo 5y ago
  On your site. Never going to use these tools.
- idle_zealot 5y ago
  This is running on your machine though. The browser downloads vscode as a SPA-style thing, and runs the editor in the browser sandbox, and can edit local files/directories.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Sure. And the google map api is free to use, you can send tweet using sms, facebook doesn't show ads and web services never change policies once they get enough users. Good thing it's running on your machine and you can see and control when it updates.
- nbzso 5y ago
  This is my personal opinion. I don't imply in any way or form that my point of view is right. You can down-vote, call me names, or ignore what I am sharing. I don't care. Since Apple CSAM attempt, something at the back of my head screamed: Regroup. React. Change. Now. Two months after Apple's "postponing for better implementation": My company runs on Arch/Manjaro (over old MacBooks Pro without T chip, custom PC's, etc). There is no iPhone in sight - my colleagues/employees found personal alternatives. I use DeGoogled Android device for banking app and flip phone. Designers are with powerful Linux boxes: Windows VM - mainly Figma (I don't like it, but this is production standard now) and Affinity Designer/Photo. We use mainly Vim/Emacs/VSCodium/Sublime. Vendor lock-in is inevitable, SaaS business logic is based on this premise. I don't care how cool it is, or how 'trendy', there is no way my company production code to be served as a "free petrol" for some monopolistic/"good intention" scheme which will feed AI advancements geared towards removing of skilled professionals. I don't like SaaS apps direction at all. We have powerful hardware now, there are proven ways of collaboration with FOSS, moving everything in the browser is utterly insane. I cannot hide how I feel about the lack of critical thinking in designers and developers today. They are always ready to jump on the bandwagon just to feel 'cool and important'. Call me crazy, or paranoid. In 5 years time all will be transparent and obvious even for the most "optimistic" ones.
joshuarubin 5y ago
While I know it's not the fault of the vscode team, it sucks that Firefox feels like a second class citizen since it doesn't support the File System Access API.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Yeah, Microsoft supporting Google via Chrome feels a lot like big Oil supporting frakking technology.
- yesimahuman 5y ago
  It’s these kinds of big mainstream products using these APIs that are the only hope to get Firefox to prioritize them. Barring that I see FF further left behind. Very frustrating as a FF user myself.
benatkin 5y ago
Part of the Visual Studio Code brand is that it's open source. With this snarky announcement, they've changed that. I've been using https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/ and who knows when there will be a web version. :(
- tills13 5y ago
  How is this announcement snarky? Also this seems like something they could easily open-source down the road.
  - oaiey 5y ago
    Well the core is surely open source as part of regular vscode. And the hosting magic other groups are doing on their own (gitpod.io ...right?). I think assuming VS Code means open source is not right. The core of VS Code is open source but most fancy things (remote/ssh/docker usage, browser usage, code spaces like behavior, etc) are regular Microsoft products. Microsoft VS Code team still competes with itself (VisualStudio), the traditional competition (JetBrains, Eclipse) and third VS Code derivates (gitpod.io etc). We cannot assume that they give us the greatest and latest for free when they would cut themselves with that.
    - ghuntley 5y ago
      Recommend reading https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history
    - benatkin 5y ago
      > I think assuming VS Code means open source is not right. When VS Code came out, Atom, which is open source, was popular, and VS Code was thought of as an alternative. So it definitely was part of VS Code's brand.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
lom 5y ago
LPT: press . on any github repository when logged in and it will open that repository in vscode.dev with everything set up Similar to github codespaces without a real computer to back it up
- napo 5y ago
  "LPT" = Life Pro Tip (just learned that)
- janjones 5y ago
  Good tip, although it's not vscode.dev, but github.dev. Slightly different thing as explained in this section: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/10/20/vscode-dev#_github https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/10/20/vscode-dev#_g...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chadlavi 5y ago
  it's neat but I wish it would also allow you to run code in a vm when you do this, so you could do things like linting, running test suites, etc before actually committing code. Without those things, this is really limited in its usefulness for any serious project, and more or less most useful as an overpowered CMS for GitHub pages blog sites or something.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Github Codespaces is a way to do exactly that, but you have to pay for it by the hour.
    - behzadhaghgoo 5y ago
      (shameless plug) I have been working on something that does this for free: https://tym.so https://tym.so . Basically, it's an in-browser vscode that can connect to any computer with a one-line install. So you can edit and run code from the browser (edit from any device run on any other device) and also has some multiplayer features when you share your url. Would you be interested in trying it?
tiffanyh 5y ago
For any Googlers, how does vscode.dev (or Codespaces) compare to your internal web based editors and code pipeline tools?
DeathArrow 5y ago
Ok, you can use VS Code like an editor in a browser. But how are you going to compile / run the code if you can't install binaries on that machine?
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  What is the context of "that machine" here?
- paxys 5y ago
  The code is still on your local disk. Compile and run it however you want.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
paxys 5y ago
It's crazy how much the dev tooling space has evolved in just the last few years. VS Code is of course a big part of it, but there are a hundred offshoots providing CI/CD, dev VPS, source control integrations, language tools, static hosting, staging, functions. The next step, IMO, is more clarity. How do all these puzzle pieces fit together, and what is the "ideal" solution for me as an individual developer or a small team to use day-to-day?
- davedx 5y ago
  There’s been loads of progress and some stuff has categorically improved the dev experience, but a lot of it is pretty chaotic churn (hello grunt, gulp, webpack, babel), and we are still missing out of the box UI tooling that shipped with Visual Studio like 20 years ago (MFC/VB forms). And let’s not even get started on the kind of stuff that was possible with Smalltalk. The problem is much dev tooling is indeed so fragmented and mostly missing strategy or direction. It’s like a collective stream of consciousness that has a bunch of directions in mind. I wonder if MSFT has the vision to reinvent some of the visionary dev tooling from the last century for the modern web. That would be really something.
brundolf 5y ago
File system access being one of the main reasons to put a web app in Electron, this could be a move toward the more lightweight future that some on HN have been clamoring for
whoomp12342 5y ago
No, fuck off. I want my code running against my own cpu so I know what is going on. Thanks.
phil294 5y ago
It would be great if we could also run VSCode in terminal. It should theoretically totally be possible, but for some reason, there is still no good text-only browser supporting JavaScript. Edit: Just tried brow.sh - only displays a white page. Might be a solution though
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
maximilianroos 5y ago
Electron in the browser! :head-explodes: (jk, this is awesome, great job)
paxys 5y ago
Something worth noting – unlike offerings like Github Codespaces, code-server and others this one is running fully in your browser (no backing VM). This is both good (faster to start and run, no server roundtrips needed) and bad (can't install custom language toolchains or run build scripts, can't pause and restart on different machines). vscode.dev is specifically not a "cloud IDE".
humantorso 5y ago
If you want to run you own version of this - try this https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/code-server https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/code-server, its very easy to configure. linuxserver has created code-server - which is vscode running in container. I have been running it in my personal network for nearly a year now. It great because it lets you code from any device. Sometimes I use this to quickly script out things on my ipad and then execute whatever script I have created using Terminus.
- paxys 5y ago
  These are two very different things. vscode.dev runs fully locally. It accesses files from your local disk, and doesn't need a network connection (after initial setup/asset caching). code-server requires the backing server to be available at all times, and all editor features are pulled from the server via a websocket connection. You can pause and resume whatever you were doing from a different device.
webwanderings 5y ago
Two features missing right away: Terminal and Remote SSH.
- behzadhaghgoo 5y ago
  From my understanding, since their vscode uses browser file access api with zero installation, adding terminal seems non-trivial. I have been working on something that solves that: https://tym.so https://tym.so (shameless plug here). I’m trying to build a vscode on the browser that can be connected to any computer with a one line install and has easy multiplayer features. Love to know what you all think about it
- oaiey 5y ago
  Is not that the differentiator between vscode.dev/github.dev and GitHub Codespaces or Eclipse Che.
- tegiddrone 5y ago
  +1 I'm curious how it would be implemented. Would we have to send ssh credentials into some proxy service to get MITM'd? Browsers can't communicate ssh directly? WebRTC hack? As some others have mentioned: linuxserver/code-server on docker would scratch this itch a little bit.
- alexissantos 5y ago
  Yes! Remote SSH on this would be a game changer for me. Especially if I can run it on an iPad...
- rubychill 5y ago
  Remote SSH would make me swap from my current code-server setup in a heartbeat.
  - behzadhaghgoo 5y ago
    wow why?
hackeratrandom 5y ago
I like using the web to create the web … & yes, always keeping an eye towards us continuing to make it the “we”b ;-)
tehlike 5y ago
Next up will be using webusb or an extension to do mobile development on browser, and streaming (or straight up running the emulator through wasm).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
honestduane 5y ago
When will the code be available? Its MIT, so it should be on github, but it's not.
shelbyKiraM 5y ago
I'm already trying to edit PNGs but in Firefox no file system access API yet, so I tried uploading an image to edit in Luna Paint but it only loads an empty image?
- Tyriar 5y ago
  Thanks I can reproduce, I created https://github.com/lunapaint/vscode-luna-paint/issues/103 https://github.com/lunapaint/vscode-luna-paint/issues/103 to track it
rpdillon 5y ago
I'm intrigued by the use of webapps in this way, but I really think we need a better solution for rebinding keys in the browser. I tend to use Emacs bindings (which practically every editor supports), but they are a bit of a mess in browsers because even extensions can't clobber bindings like C-n, and I recall having issues with C-w and C-p as well. Otherwise, very exciting to have high-quality, zero-install tooling like this!
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  I'm not an emacs user, but I am a vim user and I've been successfully using VS Code Remote + VSCodeVim the past few months from a Chrome browser without any keybind issues. I'm curious what exact keypresses the browser is struggling to intercept?
  - rpdillon 5y ago
    C-n is 'next line' in Emacs, but is permanently bound to 'new window' in every mainstream browser.

803 points by connor4312 5y ago

I was an engineer on the Visual Studio team at Microsoft from 2002-2009. If you had told me it would eventually run in a web browser I would have thought your were crazy. Back then we had to work closely with the core Windows team (memory optimizations, etc.) just so that it could run natively on a semi-beefy PC. I'm pumped that the team has been able to pull this off!

ramon 5y ago

Dream come true! Congrats!

me_im_counting 5y ago

I wonder if there will be better remote development support on vscode.dev? It used to work well for me, but in recent releases the remote functionality has gotten so flaky...

jcmontx 5y ago

I love it! Great job MSFT.

divbzero 5y ago

> Develop on your iPad. You can upload/download files (and even store them in the cloud using the Files app), as well as open repositories remotely with the built-in GitHub Repositories extension. With web apps, I’m always curious how well they support offline use. In this case, https://vscode.dev/ https://vscode.dev/ appears to do pretty well. You can “Add to Home Screen” on iPad and get the app working fullscreen with WiFi off.

yooogle 5y ago

Nice, but saving is a bit odd.

sisjohn 5y ago

One thing that I love about VSCode is the flexibility that it offers. Also, my favorite theme, Synthwave, really makes your editor looks amazing.

MR4D 5y ago

I find a couple things pretty neat here: 1 - All of the screenshots are from a Mac. This never would have happened with the old MSFT. 2 - The performance of this is pretty good. Admittedly, I just played with this for a couple minutes, but even opening a folder with a bunch of files was snappy.

dustinmoris 5y ago
This is because Microsoft doesn't seem to want Windows developers to use VS Code. They want to keep them locked into Visual Studio and Windows Azure, which is why the C# plugin is one of the worst from all language plugins in Code.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  That's a pretty strange implication. I just tried opening up a .NET Core application in VS Code developed exclusively in Visual Studio, and it fired right up. Now I certainly wouldn't say that the debugging experience is as good as VS, but nobody should expect it to be. VS Code isn't supposed to be a replacement for VS, although it can certainly hold it's own. And it's free.
  - imafish 5y ago
    VS community is also free :)
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      Yes, but it has a very significant licensing restriction that prevents it from being used to develop commercial software. VS Code has no such restriction.
      - jongalloway2 5y ago
        A little oversimplified - Visual Studio Community can be used to develop commercial software, with restrictions to (summarizing) 5 conccurrent users in non-enterprise organizations. https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/mlt031819/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/mlt031819/

up6w6 5y ago

Not open-source yet, the best alternatives for self-hosting right now are: https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server Update: also check the discussion about their differences https://github.com/cdr/code-server/discussions/4267 https://github.com/cdr/code-server/discussions/4267 (IMO both are much slower and worse than vscode.dev)

factorialboy 5y ago
+1 for GitPod .. Stellar integration with GitLab as well for CI / automation They claim Github integration as well (although I have not tried that yet).
- ghuntley 5y ago
  Geoff from Gitpod here. GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket are 1st class citizens. In time I’d like to see Gitpod extend support for sourcehut, cgit, gogs and gitea but we haven’t got around to it yet. Fortunately Gitpod is indeed opensource so anyone in the community could send in a pull-request and add support for the context parser. Come join the discord at https://www.gitpod.io/chat https://www.gitpod.io/chat #contributing channel.
combatdisinfo 5y ago
>IMO both are much slower and worse than vscode.dev This just... doesn't make sense other than browser differences and the resources of the server actually running Code. Is the free trial of GitPod slow because it's running in a resource-constrained environment. Sure. (edit: let me be clear, GitPod is an amazing end-to-end experience and they have a very generous free tier for OSS projects/users, but it IS free unless you pay). Is self-hosted GitPod or code-server slower than VSCode? Not enough that I can notice when they're side-by-side looking identical, I can't tell which is which. In fact, I would challenge a single person to show me a side-by-side version-to-version comparison that shows VSCode.dev or VSCode native being significantly faster than code-serevr given that they're virtually the exact same thing running in Chromium instead of ... Chromium/Electron. (On an unrelated note, when even CloudFlare can switch to HCaptcha, and HN can't... well, I guess it's in line with the amount of technical care this place gets all-around.)

ARandumGuy 5y ago

This seems really cool, and seems like it took a lot of man hours to put together. However, I'm not sure who this is for. Downloading and installing an application is not a particularly big ask for the type of people who use VSCode. The browser version will always be a compromised experience, given the inherent limitations of browser applications. Even if it works 99% of the time, that 1% would add enough friction to make it more of a hassle then it's worth. The post gave some use cases involving hardware that can't easily run Desktop VSCode (e.g. iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. If there are some use cases I'm missing, I'd love to hear about them! This is a pretty new concept, and I certainly don't know how everyone likes to code. But from my perspective, I struggle to see any situation where someone would choose to use this, and few situations where someone would have to.

patrickserrano 5y ago
Honestly, this looks amazing for times when I'm in a meeting and want to look a piece of more complex code but don't have a local copy of the repo. The Azure DevOps repo UI leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you know where a piece of code is called from but don't know where it's defined off the top of your head.
canada_dry 5y ago
> I'm not sure who this is for. Especially since many extensions are incompatible.
makeitdouble 5y ago
> iPads and Chromebooks). I just don't see that being much of a use case though, except in desperate circumstances where a more capable dev machine isn't available. A number of schools dispatch iPads and Chromebooks to their students. They can hook a keyboard and a mouse, and with vscode.dev they now have a decent dev machine. Sure parents could buy a windows/linux/macos laptop, but outside of the cost, maintenance is not trivial (parents wishing to restrict access to whatever resource will have a harder time) To push a bit farther, there are pretty powerful and usable Chromebooks, and iPads are now on par with most laptop when it comes to processing power, especially JS. Extending their role to be able to code a bunch is nothing to sneeze at.

n8cpdx 5y ago

Very cool stuff. I remember being at Build 2018 and asking the PM on the Live Share team if they had any plans to bring VS Code to the browser. Maybe do managed environments for labs and companies (what GitHub code spaces now is), would be great for education. Lots of students (especially non-CS nerds, like the physics kids with a CS requirement) find environment setup to be one of the hardest parts. He seemed to think I was a piece of shit for not ‘getting’ what Live Share was all about and how those other offerings (code spaces, running in the browser without install) were bad ideas not worth considering. I think the moral of the story is, if you’re a PM, don’t treat your most enthusiastic customers like shit. Or maybe do, because it won’t actually have business impact.

godot 5y ago
Just a side note... as a CS nerd and a software engineer with 15+ years of professional experience, environment setup is still one of the hardest parts for me, especially if I'm picking up a new tech stack.
- Graffur 5y ago
  It's tedious because you'll always run into an error even if following documentation. Automated dev environment setup ftw
shuntress 5y ago
> "Lots of students (especially non-CS nerds, like the physics kids with a CS requirement) find environment setup to be one of the hardest parts." Advice I received early that has stuck with me (and that I have found to be true): "Environment setup is the hardest part". This was true for me in school and has remained true through multiple professional teams.
ghuntley 5y ago
Heya, Geoff from Gitpod here. > Maybe do managed environments for labs and companies (what GitHub code spaces now is), would be great for education. I agree. There is an entire class of problems that attendees and educators continue to put up with when they shouldn’t need to because these concerns can be removed through automation. I dumped my thoughts about this over at https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code

OliverGilan 5y ago

I wonder if this uses pretty much the exact same code as the desktop version. It seems to me that one of the big benefits of using Electron would be to have one codebase deployable as a desktop app and a website with very little change for each deployment.

minimaxir 5y ago
See https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server https://github.com/gitpod-io/openvscode-server which has that design philosophy.
qbasic_forever 5y ago
It's going to use most of the frontend UI code but all of the NodeJS-specific stuff in the desktop version is a no-go and has to be shimmed or polyfilled to run in the browser. The biggest thing you lose here is system-level access like the ability to run processes--tests, terminals, debugging, etc. And as the blog post mentions unfortunately these things aren't supported yet in vscode.dev.

dudus 5y ago

> quickly parked it (...) (or, if you are from the Boston area like me, we "pahked it" What a strange joke to include on Developer docs.

judge2020 5y ago
This is on /blogs and has an author under the title of the post.
aptxkid 5y ago
Proud to be a Bostonian!
aydwi 5y ago
Yeah what a shame...I too prefer to pretend like a robot on this forum.

minimaxir 5y ago

For those who think web-based IDEs are inefficient, I recommend giving VS Code in the browser a try: nowadays it's just as performant as it is on the desktop. Even on the iPad it's just as performant (with 120Hz scrolling!), although as noted in the announcement, the file system limitations make it a bit of a pain to work with for ad hoc coding.

brundolf 5y ago
There would be no performance difference (at least at the UI layer) between a web app running in the browser and the same web app running in Electron, so this doesn't really demonstrate anything new WRT performance
ghuntley 5y ago
Geoff here from Gitpod. My primary development machine is an iPad after I bricked my M1 laptop. I’m currently out in the middle of no-where of Australia with my van so I’m all in. Even when I get my M1 fixed I’m likely to keep my thin client device for hipsters as my primary development machine. See https://ghuntley.com/anywhere https://ghuntley.com/anywhere for tips and tricks.
- daqhris 5y ago
  Thanks for your link. I can only imagine a future where remote dev work is the new norm. As the rest of society discovers the joys of working from anywhere, such browser-based coding innovations are helpful to on-board new curious developers. We no longer need costly setups/desktops to run very useful software like VSCode. After seeing this post, I started searching for a cheap and good tablet which led me to a soon-to-be released Android tablet from Nokia (less than 250€). Tablets are trending again! Coupled with other existing affordable solutions like Termux and Git, software development will attract more people regardless of personal background/status/location. We won't be seen as hipsters for long. I am heading towards making life changes similar to yours (hopefully after Santa delivers his gifts on-time), so I feel grateful that you shared your experience.
johnday 5y ago

beebeepka 5y ago

> we "pahked it" It took almost 30 years to finally get comfortable with the way native, mostly British, speakers pronounce R. It still doesn't feel right but I no longer fight. I can still picture myself yelling my hard Rs at Google translate and it consistently failing to understand me. Somewhat more on topic: I just realized I've been using nothing but Viscose for 2 years now. Still not as good as WebStorm but it's getting there. It wasn't nearly as good back in 2017. Not sure I want it to be just a tab in my browser thought. Very cool nonetheless. We've come a long way

tracnar 5y ago

It seems to be like Theia https://theia-ide.org/ https://theia-ide.org/ which is based on vscode and runs in the browser. It's used by this project to give a full lab/workspace and ide in the cloud:https://www.eclipse.org/che/ https://www.eclipse.org/che/ (it's actually closer to vscode even though eclipse is in the name).

ghuntley 5y ago
Yo. Last night Gitpod’s IDE architect (one of the key folks behind Theia) did a great blog post on the history of cloud IDE’s over at https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history
qbasic_forever 5y ago
No theia has a nodejs server backing its web experience. This vscode.dev is an entirely client side JS application that runs in your browser--there's no backend server beyond something to serve a pile of static JS and html.
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  Is this true about vscode.dev? This was the first question I had while reading the blogpost: Do all my local files stay on my machine or do they get uploaded to a remote server?
  - qbasic_forever 5y ago
    The blog post says it's using a brand new local file access API only in cutting edge browsers (edge and chrome) so you can access the files on your machine directly from the browser. There is no server upload of anything.
- tracnar 5y ago
  Ah yes that's cool, they mention even the Python extension can run client-side.

louissan 5y ago

yeah. no.

tiffanyh 5y ago

>"Fast forward to today. Now when you go to https://vscode.dev https://vscode.dev, you'll be presented with a lightweight version of VS Code running fully in the browser." Does that imply there is functionality missing from the online version of VS Code?

meibo 5y ago
If you were to continue reading, you would be informed that many of the non-web languages don't have the same support in this version, since it can't run native language servers/any extensions that use OS-level APIs.
easton 5y ago
Mostly anything that relies on having a real system attached to it instead of the browser JS engine. Running code, or a terminal, or things that rely on the git binary. Lots of extensions are working to remove their dependencies on the local system though.
- tiffanyh 5y ago
  So these limitations don't exist for Codespaces then?
  - easton 5y ago
    They do not.
lucasmullens 5y ago
Some extensions aren't available, such as GitLens.
- JimiofEden 5y ago
  Yeah, the first thing I tried was to install some Go extensions. I guess they'll need to have separate web versions (or some sort of extra qualifiers)

alexnewman 5y ago

I've been using codespaces for a while. now my copilot doeasn't work there.

thurn 5y ago

I've love to see this for open source, especially integrated into GitHub. A simple "click here to contribute" button could really lower the barrier to entry for first-timers.

qbasic_forever 5y ago
This has been around for a year now: https://github.com/features/codespaces https://github.com/features/codespaces
fetzu 5y ago
I’m not sure if I am understanding your post correctly, but AFAIK you can just hit “.” from your browser on GitHub and it opens an editor (based on VSCode) for that repo. Not sure if Git is fully integrated in there (although, it being based on VSCode, it should).
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Yes, just hitting dot in Github opens up Github.dev which is very similar to this VSCode.dev. So similar that this VSCode.dev lets you get the same experience if you rewrite a Github.com repo URLs and prefix it with VSCode.dev. Today VSCode.dev also supports the same thing with Azure Repos if you prefix dev.azure.com repo URLs. The "remote repository" experience on VSCode.dev is a little more involved than just "fully integrated git" (it relies on the GitHub/Azure Repos APIs and existing VS Code extensions with Remoting support for some of it beyond just what raw git can provied), but they say in this article that it is extendable and they can and hope to add other providers in the future.
dolmen 5y ago
https://github.dev/ https://github.dev/

ravenstine 5y ago

This is exactly what I've been looking for. There was another site (forget the name, something-something-cloud) that supposedly did this but it seems abandoned and didn't work on any browser that I used. An online VS Code would not only make doing quick things with GitHub repos much easier but can be great for people just getting into learning programming because it doesn't require installing anything, but you are essentially starting out with a professional tool. That and every once in a while I'm not on my own computer thus it would be pretty nice to kill time coding with a VS Code instance that doesn't need installation.

tiffanyh 5y ago
You might be thinking of https://coder.com https://coder.com >"Code-server is the primary open source project we maintain. It allows developers to use a browser to access remote dev environments running VS Code"
pjot 5y ago
Was it cloud9?[0] I remember this from a few years ago, but it seems like it was killed after they were acquired by AWS. [0]: https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/ https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/

tckerr 5y ago

I would love to be able to pop this open for prototyping simple python/js scripts, but the lack of "run" support makes that much less feasible. Curious to see where the next iterations go.

riquito 5y ago

What api is it using to let you create a file in a local directory? I know about https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/FileSystem but that's for virtualized filesystems

tkzed49 5y ago
confusingly called the File System Access API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...
yunohn 5y ago
They’ve literally linked it at first mention - https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/File_System_Acces... .
qbasic_forever 5y ago
Web file system access API, it's only in edge and chrome right now unfortunately: https://web.dev/file-system-access/ https://web.dev/file-system-access/
Macha 5y ago
The File System Access API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System_Access_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System... e.g. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/showDirectoryPicker https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/show... will give you access to a handle representing a directory on the user's real file system

qbasic_forever 5y ago

Interesting they're using tree-sitter for syntax highlighting. Obviously they can't run LSPs in the browser so this must have been an alternative. I'd be curious to see this get into mainline desktop VS Code though (and I'm not alone: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/50140 https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/50140).

WorldMaker 5y ago
The article points out that the Typescript/Javascript and Python LSPs run in the browser providing "better" experience than the tree-sitter experiences for languages without browser capable LSPs today.
tehlike 5y ago
why can't they run LSP?
IshKebab 5y ago
They don't use tree-sitter for syntax highlighting unless the extension you're using uses it. By default (and almost everything uses the default) VSCode uses the Textmate syntax highlighting system. And there's no reason they can't use the LSP in the browser as long as the actual language servers can run in the browser - pretty easy with most languages these days.

k__ 5y ago

If file access is supported by all browsers, this accompanied with WASM could lead to a new era for web apps.

jt2190 5y ago

It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves compared with other players in this space. (Stackblitz comes to mind. They added support for “WebContainers” recently, for in-browser hosting of server-side code: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27223012)

peakaboo 5y ago

I don't think this will be a success. If I get to choose between this and my own local installation, of course i will run the local version. Why would I want to sit in the browser? To continue on the same cursor position I was if I switch computer? Not worth it at all.

hunterb123 5y ago
It's not competing against local, it's in addition to.

wiradikusuma 5y ago

FYI: You can't run/compile your code (yet), and by extension it means it won't show any error/warning (I tried deleting some lines). I'm guessing the next step is cloud build.

xnyan 5y ago
>https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server This may be what you're looking for? An agent runs on the development computer, and you get everything that it has (debugging, compilation, etc).

stared 5y ago

A modern browser environment is an OS on its own. Change my view.

ghuntley 5y ago
Yup. See https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code https://gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code and https://ghuntley.com/anywhere https://ghuntley.com/anywhere
keyb0ardninja 5y ago
More like a virtual machine. The javascript virtual machine.
echelon 5y ago
You should talk to Suhail Doshi. https://www.mightyapp.com/ https://www.mightyapp.com/
paxys 5y ago
That was already the case a long time ago. We have now reached the stage where individual applications running in the browser can be an OS on their own – VS Code itself is a very good example.

artisanspam 5y ago

I was hoping this would be the thing that makes coding on an iPad not awful. But any keyboard shortcuts are consumed by Safari, so it's a pain to use. However, I hope that this enables the VS Code team to make a native iOS/Android VS Code app that would essentially just be a web browser that uses this functionality.

keyb0ardninja 5y ago
You can do this right now on android. If you're using chrome/chromium based browser, just visit vscode.dev and then select add to home screen from the browser menu. A similar option exists in firefox on android too, I believe. Once you open the shortcut created from the previous step, it will open the webapp without the browser's UI.
- jpindar 5y ago
  How did you get Chrome not to hijack right-clicks?
  - keyb0ardninja 5y ago
    I didn't play around with it much. It might have the issues you're facing.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Do you mean vscode.dev itself hijacking right-clicks to display its context menu[0]? If so, there's this great extension I use to enable it on the myriad of websites that use it for non-alt-context-menu usage[1]. 0: https://i.judge.sh/thirsty/Flutter/chrome_w3SVLELGag.png https://i.judge.sh/thirsty/Flutter/chrome_w3SVLELGag.png 1: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enable-right-click/hhojmcideegachlhfgfdhailpfhgknjm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enable-right-click...
    - jpindar 5y ago
      Umm... no. I want vscode.dev's context menu.

mseepgood 5y ago

What's the feature that allows a website to open local files and folders? Edit: I think I found it: File System Access API, supported by Chrome and Edge, not supported by Safari and Firefox

hbn 5y ago
> supported by Chrome and Edge read: supported by Chrome

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

It's not only an awesome technical achievement, but it has also so much potential to be useful. And yet, something at the back on my head is screaming: WARNING! I have the intuition that, on the long run, using more and more tools that are not on your own machine will create a dependency on systems big companies control. And something tells me we are going to pay for it in the end. So I'll stay away. Maybe I'm getting paranoid, but I don't regret not having ever created a Facebook account, or not getting on the 2010 hype train of magical SAAS services like Firebase that lock you in eventually. We'll see in 10 years I guess.

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blumomo 5y ago
On your site. Never going to use these tools.
idle_zealot 5y ago
This is running on your machine though. The browser downloads vscode as a SPA-style thing, and runs the editor in the browser sandbox, and can edit local files/directories.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Sure. And the google map api is free to use, you can send tweet using sms, facebook doesn't show ads and web services never change policies once they get enough users. Good thing it's running on your machine and you can see and control when it updates.
nbzso 5y ago
This is my personal opinion. I don't imply in any way or form that my point of view is right. You can down-vote, call me names, or ignore what I am sharing. I don't care. Since Apple CSAM attempt, something at the back of my head screamed: Regroup. React. Change. Now. Two months after Apple's "postponing for better implementation": My company runs on Arch/Manjaro (over old MacBooks Pro without T chip, custom PC's, etc). There is no iPhone in sight - my colleagues/employees found personal alternatives. I use DeGoogled Android device for banking app and flip phone. Designers are with powerful Linux boxes: Windows VM - mainly Figma (I don't like it, but this is production standard now) and Affinity Designer/Photo. We use mainly Vim/Emacs/VSCodium/Sublime. Vendor lock-in is inevitable, SaaS business logic is based on this premise. I don't care how cool it is, or how 'trendy', there is no way my company production code to be served as a "free petrol" for some monopolistic/"good intention" scheme which will feed AI advancements geared towards removing of skilled professionals. I don't like SaaS apps direction at all. We have powerful hardware now, there are proven ways of collaboration with FOSS, moving everything in the browser is utterly insane. I cannot hide how I feel about the lack of critical thinking in designers and developers today. They are always ready to jump on the bandwagon just to feel 'cool and important'. Call me crazy, or paranoid. In 5 years time all will be transparent and obvious even for the most "optimistic" ones.

joshuarubin 5y ago

While I know it's not the fault of the vscode team, it sucks that Firefox feels like a second class citizen since it doesn't support the File System Access API.

fartcannon 5y ago
Yeah, Microsoft supporting Google via Chrome feels a lot like big Oil supporting frakking technology.
yesimahuman 5y ago
It’s these kinds of big mainstream products using these APIs that are the only hope to get Firefox to prioritize them. Barring that I see FF further left behind. Very frustrating as a FF user myself.

benatkin 5y ago

Part of the Visual Studio Code brand is that it's open source. With this snarky announcement, they've changed that. I've been using https://vscodium.com/ https://vscodium.com/ and who knows when there will be a web version. :(

tills13 5y ago
How is this announcement snarky? Also this seems like something they could easily open-source down the road.
- oaiey 5y ago
  Well the core is surely open source as part of regular vscode. And the hosting magic other groups are doing on their own (gitpod.io ...right?). I think assuming VS Code means open source is not right. The core of VS Code is open source but most fancy things (remote/ssh/docker usage, browser usage, code spaces like behavior, etc) are regular Microsoft products. Microsoft VS Code team still competes with itself (VisualStudio), the traditional competition (JetBrains, Eclipse) and third VS Code derivates (gitpod.io etc). We cannot assume that they give us the greatest and latest for free when they would cut themselves with that.
  - ghuntley 5y ago
    Recommend reading https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history https://gitpod.io/blog/cloud-ide-history
  - benatkin 5y ago
    > I think assuming VS Code means open source is not right. When VS Code came out, Atom, which is open source, was popular, and VS Code was thought of as an alternative. So it definitely was part of VS Code's brand.
- deleted 5y ago
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lom 5y ago

LPT: press . on any github repository when logged in and it will open that repository in vscode.dev with everything set up Similar to github codespaces without a real computer to back it up

napo 5y ago
"LPT" = Life Pro Tip (just learned that)
janjones 5y ago
Good tip, although it's not vscode.dev, but github.dev. Slightly different thing as explained in this section: https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/10/20/vscode-dev#_github https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2021/10/20/vscode-dev#_g...
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chadlavi 5y ago
it's neat but I wish it would also allow you to run code in a vm when you do this, so you could do things like linting, running test suites, etc before actually committing code. Without those things, this is really limited in its usefulness for any serious project, and more or less most useful as an overpowered CMS for GitHub pages blog sites or something.
- paxys 5y ago
  Github Codespaces is a way to do exactly that, but you have to pay for it by the hour.
  - behzadhaghgoo 5y ago
    (shameless plug) I have been working on something that does this for free: https://tym.so https://tym.so . Basically, it's an in-browser vscode that can connect to any computer with a one-line install. So you can edit and run code from the browser (edit from any device run on any other device) and also has some multiplayer features when you share your url. Would you be interested in trying it?

tiffanyh 5y ago

For any Googlers, how does vscode.dev (or Codespaces) compare to your internal web based editors and code pipeline tools?

DeathArrow 5y ago

Ok, you can use VS Code like an editor in a browser. But how are you going to compile / run the code if you can't install binaries on that machine?

jstummbillig 5y ago
What is the context of "that machine" here?
paxys 5y ago
The code is still on your local disk. Compile and run it however you want.
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paxys 5y ago

It's crazy how much the dev tooling space has evolved in just the last few years. VS Code is of course a big part of it, but there are a hundred offshoots providing CI/CD, dev VPS, source control integrations, language tools, static hosting, staging, functions. The next step, IMO, is more clarity. How do all these puzzle pieces fit together, and what is the "ideal" solution for me as an individual developer or a small team to use day-to-day?

davedx 5y ago
There’s been loads of progress and some stuff has categorically improved the dev experience, but a lot of it is pretty chaotic churn (hello grunt, gulp, webpack, babel), and we are still missing out of the box UI tooling that shipped with Visual Studio like 20 years ago (MFC/VB forms). And let’s not even get started on the kind of stuff that was possible with Smalltalk. The problem is much dev tooling is indeed so fragmented and mostly missing strategy or direction. It’s like a collective stream of consciousness that has a bunch of directions in mind. I wonder if MSFT has the vision to reinvent some of the visionary dev tooling from the last century for the modern web. That would be really something.

brundolf 5y ago

File system access being one of the main reasons to put a web app in Electron, this could be a move toward the more lightweight future that some on HN have been clamoring for

whoomp12342 5y ago

No, fuck off. I want my code running against my own cpu so I know what is going on. Thanks.

phil294 5y ago

It would be great if we could also run VSCode in terminal. It should theoretically totally be possible, but for some reason, there is still no good text-only browser supporting JavaScript. Edit: Just tried brow.sh - only displays a white page. Might be a solution though

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maximilianroos 5y ago

Electron in the browser! :head-explodes: (jk, this is awesome, great job)

paxys 5y ago

Something worth noting – unlike offerings like Github Codespaces, code-server and others this one is running fully in your browser (no backing VM). This is both good (faster to start and run, no server roundtrips needed) and bad (can't install custom language toolchains or run build scripts, can't pause and restart on different machines). vscode.dev is specifically not a "cloud IDE".

humantorso 5y ago

If you want to run you own version of this - try this https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/code-server https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/code-server, its very easy to configure. linuxserver has created code-server - which is vscode running in container. I have been running it in my personal network for nearly a year now. It great because it lets you code from any device. Sometimes I use this to quickly script out things on my ipad and then execute whatever script I have created using Terminus.

paxys 5y ago
These are two very different things. vscode.dev runs fully locally. It accesses files from your local disk, and doesn't need a network connection (after initial setup/asset caching). code-server requires the backing server to be available at all times, and all editor features are pulled from the server via a websocket connection. You can pause and resume whatever you were doing from a different device.

webwanderings 5y ago

Two features missing right away: Terminal and Remote SSH.

behzadhaghgoo 5y ago
From my understanding, since their vscode uses browser file access api with zero installation, adding terminal seems non-trivial. I have been working on something that solves that: https://tym.so https://tym.so (shameless plug here). I’m trying to build a vscode on the browser that can be connected to any computer with a one line install and has easy multiplayer features. Love to know what you all think about it
oaiey 5y ago
Is not that the differentiator between vscode.dev/github.dev and GitHub Codespaces or Eclipse Che.
tegiddrone 5y ago
+1 I'm curious how it would be implemented. Would we have to send ssh credentials into some proxy service to get MITM'd? Browsers can't communicate ssh directly? WebRTC hack? As some others have mentioned: linuxserver/code-server on docker would scratch this itch a little bit.
alexissantos 5y ago
Yes! Remote SSH on this would be a game changer for me. Especially if I can run it on an iPad...
rubychill 5y ago
Remote SSH would make me swap from my current code-server setup in a heartbeat.
- behzadhaghgoo 5y ago
  wow why?

hackeratrandom 5y ago

I like using the web to create the web … & yes, always keeping an eye towards us continuing to make it the “we”b ;-)

tehlike 5y ago

Next up will be using webusb or an extension to do mobile development on browser, and streaming (or straight up running the emulator through wasm).

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honestduane 5y ago

When will the code be available? Its MIT, so it should be on github, but it's not.

shelbyKiraM 5y ago

I'm already trying to edit PNGs but in Firefox no file system access API yet, so I tried uploading an image to edit in Luna Paint but it only loads an empty image?

Tyriar 5y ago
Thanks I can reproduce, I created https://github.com/lunapaint/vscode-luna-paint/issues/103 https://github.com/lunapaint/vscode-luna-paint/issues/103 to track it

rpdillon 5y ago

I'm intrigued by the use of webapps in this way, but I really think we need a better solution for rebinding keys in the browser. I tend to use Emacs bindings (which practically every editor supports), but they are a bit of a mess in browsers because even extensions can't clobber bindings like C-n, and I recall having issues with C-w and C-p as well. Otherwise, very exciting to have high-quality, zero-install tooling like this!

wildrhythms 5y ago
I'm not an emacs user, but I am a vim user and I've been successfully using VS Code Remote + VSCodeVim the past few months from a Chrome browser without any keybind issues. I'm curious what exact keypresses the browser is struggling to intercept?
- rpdillon 5y ago
  C-n is 'next line' in Emacs, but is permanently bound to 'new window' in every mainstream browser.