7 ms·
Intel XDK: An HTML5 development IDE
- anonyfox 13y agoSeems like the most advanced node-webkit [1] application so far. Great to see how node.js is used for more and more crossplatform non-web apps. Cites Atwoods law here... [1] https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
- moondowner 13y agoHas anyone tried to develop node-webkit apps with XDK? I'm using IDEA at the moment with few workarounds, but if this works better I'll make the switch.
- xmnboy 13y agoYou cannot use the XDK to develop node-webkit apps. The XDK itself is a node-webkit app, but you use it to develop HTML5 hybrid apps for mobile devices.
- aplummer 13y agoAfter playing with it, seems like Brackets (anecdotal guess, though I'm pretty confident) wrapped with a bunch of mobile device stuff ala Ripple (does intel own ripple now?) combined with a pretty deep build system. Could be really handy for making quick apps for conferences or hi-fi prototypes imo. Particularly the cross platform build system - seems really easy.
- ibdknox 13y agoI can confirm it's brackets.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- desipenguin 13y agoYes It is Brackets - Says so here : http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/tools - Look for "More creation options" or just search for "Brackets" on this page.
- RyanZAG 13y agoIf you're curious why Intel is making an HTML5 IDE and what their goals are, you can check out this blog post: http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/blogs/why-intel-xdk-new http://software.intel.com/en-us/html5/blogs/why-intel-xdk-ne...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- webmaven 13y agoDang, all those asterisks that don't actually refer to footnotes are really confusing. I wonder if they are supposed to be trademark symbols...
- sect 13y agoThey're tiny ® (registered trademark) symbols.
- caw 13y agoKind of. They're actually footnotes (asterisks), referring to the same footnote. On this particular website it appears to be referring to the "*Trademark" link, which has the extended legalese. In the standard Intel style (whitepapers, etc), trademarks to other companies are designated with an asterisk and a footnote to the effect of "These are trademarks from companies other than Intel. They own the rights to the name, and not us"
- xmnboy 13y agoYes, those asterisks just refer to a footnote that declares that "*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others." --> http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/trademarks.html http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/legal/trademarks.html
- 0x0 13y agoWhen Intel are saying they want to "promote cross-platform HTML5 app development - for all platforms, not just Intel's", I'm wondering if what they are really saying is they're not fans of the current processor-specific native apps (because they are compiled for ARM, not Intel CPUs), and they are trying to stop that avalanche before it grows into a huge pile of legacy making it impossible to compete in the mobile/phone space with a non-ARM CPU? How selfless of them ;)
- camus2 13y agois it open source ?
- Intermernet 13y agoDoesn't look like it. http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/ http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/ Seems fairly permissive, but has provisions to do with de-compiling anything distributed in binary form so it looks fairly mixed. This may though just be due to use of some legacy, licensed library somewhere rather than deliberately restrictive licensing. I haven't looked closely at what comes with XDK so I'm not sure what components are used.
- treenyc 13y agopersonally, I won't use for anything important to my software business on license that is non open source. Intel, I won't be using it for my money making business. This corporate license thing is so 1990's. Get with GPL alfaro. You will create way more wealth for the planet that way.
- Theodores 13y agoNo but it does run on Linux! Just remember to get the 64 bit version of the download.
- marknadal 13y agoReally great engine, I highly recommend it. I'm even looking for somebody who would know how to write native bridge plugins for it (or convert existing phonegap ones) - I just want alarm clock controls that actually work on iOS (android is easy). Anybody?
- jlink 13y agoWhy Intel loves HTML5 explained through a video embeded in a flash player... :-D See screenshot : http://goo.gl/fwkZve http://goo.gl/fwkZve Intel page : http://goo.gl/sTk5Zo http://goo.gl/sTk5Zo
- johnyzee 13y agoIt is based on AppMobi that Intel bought some months ago. AppMobi was an alternative to PhoneGap, but it attempted to streamline the whole process of wrapping an HTML5 app into a native app, with an "IDE" (more of a GUI for the build process) and a cloud-based assembly and provisioning platform. And of course a lot of proprietary APIs for stuff like in-app payments, social integration, etc. I tried AppMobi early on but as a developer I much prefer something open like PhoneGap, even if (or because) I have to glue the pieces together by myself. I don't really see the demographic that knows how to develop an HTML5 web application but prefers a closed black-box environment for putting together the mobile app. The AppMobi XDK was pretty slick though. But from the announcement it seems like they pretty much tore it down and started over from scratch. These days I hold higher hopes for real convert-to-native tools, that actually translates HTML5 (f.ex. the canvas API) to native code.
- phoboslab 13y agoAppMobi actually used Ejecta[1] for their Canvas2D rendering on iOS - which it seems also made its way into the Intel XDK[2]. I believe they have their own implementation for Canvas2D on Android, but sadly, it's all closed source. I should really get a cross-platform effort for Ejecta going. We have CocoonJS and Intel's XDK, but afaik there's no Open Source alternative right now. [1] http://impactjs.com/ejecta http://impactjs.com/ejecta [2] http://www.html5dev-software.intel.com/amdocs/readmes/ios.applab.readme.txt http://www.html5dev-software.intel.com/amdocs/readmes/ios.ap...
- notnowlewis 13y agoEjecta is awesome. I remember helping out in the early days of it, fixing up some alpha and rotation bugs... it's a shame how badly intel's "accelerated" canvas performs on android. On the nexus 4, native canvas looks better and performs roughly the same.
- qubyte 13y agoThere is an effort to port ejecta to android, which a company I used to work for is now maintaining. That means accelerated canvas for the big two.
- desipenguin 13y agoWhy must I signup to Intel XDK ? This should be optional
- sbarre 13y agoDownloading it is optional.
- jbeja 13y agoThat is not the idea
- xmnboy 13y agoThe username and password is needed to manage your cloud account; a backend server that is used for build services and to manage the wireless test and debug features. If you are not connected to the Internet when you start the XDK it will still function, but you will, obviously, not be able to use those features that require access to the cloud services to function.
- jbeja 13y agoI love the Linux support, but why the IDE theme is so ugly?
- general_failure 13y agoNot just the theme. The alignment, layout, heavy use of text everywhere is just off-putting.
- jbeja 13y agoYeah it doesn't look well for my 1024x600 laptop, all looks chopped and cluttered.
- lazyjones 13y agoIt's a good idea and apparently a slick package, but useless due to the restrictive license and binary-only distribution. I certainly won't build and distribute mobile apps with whatever obscure (and non-removable according to ToS) "security features" Intel has decided to bundle with the runtime e.g. to comply with arbitrary requests by various rogue government agencies. If they want us to build HTML5 apps for their own sake (Intel's, they want to fight back against native ARM binaries), they'll have to try harder. Make it Open Source and ask a lawyer who hasn't been stuck in corporate litigation and patenting stuff for several decades to write a modern license (or use the LGPL/BSD/MIT license...).
- general_failure 13y agoCompletely agree with the open sourcing part. It looks like they want to create HTML5 app for their own sake.
- cabbeer 13y agoCan you please explain what the restrictive licences and "binary-only distribution" are in layman's terms. I'm a front end developer this looks like a good introduction to developing and distributing mobile apps. How will the ToS hinder me from doing so?
- lazyjones 13y agoFor a complete analysis you'll have to ask a lawyer. But for me, the fact that you "may not reverse-assemble, reverse-compile, or otherwise reverse-engineer any portion of the Intel Materials provided solely in binary form" (http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/ http://appcenter.html5tools-software.intel.com/TOS/, see II.2.C) is enough of a red flag already. I'm not going to use or distribute something to my users for which I signed away my rights to examine and see what it actually does. Furthermore, they want the right to disable access to some content somehow if they think it is illegal (i.e. they have rights to arbitrary censorship of content and apparently also some mechanism built into the runtime to enforce it). Am I going to distribute or even sell stuff to users that Intel can disable any time they like? Certainly not. If they wanted a license that puts off developers who have plenty of choices nowdays, they succeeded.
- mrinterweb 13y agoIt is too bad that XDK is still on Cordova 2.9. 3.3 is out now and is a big jump from 2.x.
- xmnboy 13y agoCordova 3.0 support is coming. :)
- michaelmior 13y agoDisappointed to see that it's Windows only.
- malkia 13y agoI got it running on my HP pavillion Chromebook 14 (stable) in developer mode using croutonized debian jessie (64-bit). It works but I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with it :)
- _random_ 13y agoThey are just targeting the 95% of developers.
- michaelmior 13y agoWhile there are certainly a lot of developers using Windows, I'm skeptical that it's as high as 95% given the number of developers using Mac OS these days.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- xmnboy 13y agoThe XDK itself is available for Windows, OS X and Linux. When you go to the download page (http://xdk-software.intel.com/ http://xdk-software.intel.com/) it detects the OS you are using and provides you with the appropriate download. At the bottom of the download page are links to download the XDK for a "non-detected" system. The XDK operates identically on all three platforms, one of the reasons for using node-webkit to create the app.
- michaelmior 13y agoInteresting. I just assumed since it seems to have detected that my Linux machine is running Windows. The fact that they were using node-webkit did make me surprised that it appeared to be platform-specific.
- simplehuman 13y agoAm I the only one who finds the UI is horribly ugly? The tabs make no sense. Why is it all hogging the ide space when most of the things are rarely used (services, build) - why not put them in the menu? Products likes these are what give HTML5 a bad name.
- jbeja 13y agoYeah is ugly and dated and the users experience is not there, i don't know why a big company like Intel doesn't know that the first layer of conversion is the design. Make thing pretty and pleasant to use before launch!.
- malkia 13y agoI feel that UX designer cannot be fulltime job at some of these places
- ghenne 13y agoWhich products do you think do a good job?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Trufa 13y agoIncredible, the website looks terrible on tablets and phones.
- walid 13y agoWhy does an IDE require a username and password to use it?
- xmnboy 13y agoThe username and password is needed to manage your cloud account; a backend server that is used for build services and to manage the wireless test and debug features. If you are not connected to the Internet when you start the XDK it will still function, but you will, obviously, not be able to use those features that require access to the cloud services to function.