Simple JavaScript IDE

[Xcriber51]

Hi

I've come here after googling for this a day or two and not being able to
spot what I'm looking for.

I need a JavaScript IDE -- no frills, nothing special -- that offers me
the ability to

- directly call my functions
- step through them

I know that the VBA IDE you find attached to programs like Excel has an
"Immediate" pane where you can do that.

That is a good way to study intricate algorithms, and JavaScript offers
everything I need (including features like closures, etc.).

Some IDEs I've found (such as Aptana) are too large, bulky, and contain
too many features which may be necessary while developing but I don't
need.

Any suggestions?
-- K

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[Jeremy]

Xcriber51 <Ken wrote:

Hi

I've come here after googling for this a day or two and not being able to
spot what I'm looking for.

I need a JavaScript IDE -- no frills, nothing special -- that offers me
the ability to

- directly call my functions
- step through them

I know that the VBA IDE you find attached to programs like Excel has an
"Immediate" pane where you can do that.

That is a good way to study intricate algorithms, and JavaScript offers
everything I need (including features like closures, etc.).

Some IDEs I've found (such as Aptana) are too large, bulky, and contain
too many features which may be necessary while developing but I don't
need.

Any suggestions?
-- K

--
Message posted using http://www.talkaboutprogramming.com/...ng.javascript/
More information at http://www.talkaboutprogramming.com/faq.html

Firebug (a Firefox extension) is not an IDE, but it does provide a
simple debugger that does what you want. It has a console in which you
can directly call functions, and a simple debugger that allows you to
set breakpoints and perform stepping.

Use your favorite text editor for editing, then load the page in Firefox
and use Firebug to do your debugging.

http://www.getfirebug.com/

Jeremy

[David Golightly]

On Oct 2, 4:02 pm, Jeremy <[e-mail]:

Xcriber51 <Ken wrote:

I need a JavaScript IDE -- no frills, nothing special -- that offers me
the ability to

- directly call my functions
- step through them

Any suggestions?

Use your favorite text editor for editing, then load the page in Firefox
and use Firebug to do your debugging.

http://www.getfirebug.com/

I second that, but would add that if you're interested in developing
in JavaScript outside the context of browser programming, you might
want to check out Rhino:

http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/

which gives you access to the built-in Java classes via a JavaScript
command-line interpreter; alternatively, you can download and build
the interpreter for SpiderMonkey, Mozilla's JS engine, which is
currently at JavaScript 1.8 and lets you play with the more Pythonic
stuff Mozilla's been taking the language recently, such as generator
expressions, destructuring assignment, Array comprehensions, etc.

-David

[Xcriber51]

Thanks, guys.

I checked Rhino and SpiderMonkey but as I use Windows and yet don't have
MS Visual Studio (I have Borland's BCC55, cygwin, and lcc none of which
worked; I also don't have Java, and spent hours trying to download the 50
MB thing as I got interrupted twice right at the end), I couldn't compile
them. I don't see why they don't make compiled versions available.

Any links where I can spot the binaries of these, David?

Thanks again.

-- K

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Message posted using http://www.talkaboutprogramming.com/...ng.javascript/
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[David Golightly]

On Oct 3, 9:08 am, "Xcriber51" <Ken <[e-mail]>wrote:

Thanks, guys.

I checked Rhino and SpiderMonkey but as I use Windows and yet don't have
MS Visual Studio (I have Borland's BCC55, cygwin, and lcc none of which
worked; I also don't have Java, and spent hours trying to download the 50
MB thing as I got interrupted twice right at the end), I couldn't compile
them. I don't see why they don't make compiled versions available.

Any links where I can spot the binaries of these, David?

Rhino's current Java binaries (.jar) are located at:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/rhino1_6R7.zip

Link to latest binaries lives at http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/download.html

Unzip them into the folder of your choice, open a command prompt, cd
into the folder, then run

java -jar js.jar

You can create a file "js.bat" with the single line

@java -jar <path-to-rhino>\js.jar

and put the rhino folder in your system's PATH variable. Now you can
always type simply "js" in any command prompt to get your JS command
line.

Building SpiderMonkey under Cygwin is kind of a pain; I'll have to
investigate it and get back to you. (It's really obnoxious that the
Mozilla team built the Windows install assuming a Visual Studio
machine. I'm a web developer. I have to run Windows. That doesn't
mean I want to run MS development software.)

-David

[Ingo Muschenetz (Aptana)]

On Oct 3, 10:59 am, David Golightly <[e-mail]:

On Oct 3, 9:08 am, "Xcriber51" <Ken <[e-mail]>wrote:

Thanks, guys.

I checked Rhino and SpiderMonkey but as I use Windows and yet don't have
MS Visual Studio (I have Borland's BCC55, cygwin, and lcc none of which
worked; I also don't have Java, and spent hours trying to download the 50
MB thing as I got interrupted twice right at the end), I couldn't compile
them. I don't see why they don't make compiled versions available.

Any links where I can spot the binaries of these, David?

Rhino's current Java binaries (.jar) are located at:

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/rhino1_6R7.zip

Link to latest binaries lives athttp://www.mozilla.org/rhino/download.html

Unzip them into the folder of your choice, open a command prompt, cd
into the folder, then run

java -jar js.jar

You can create a file "js.bat" with the single line

@java -jar <path-to-rhino>\js.jar

and put the rhino folder in your system's PATH variable. Now you can
always type simply "js" in any command prompt to get your JS command
line.

Building SpiderMonkey under Cygwin is kind of a pain; I'll have to
investigate it and get back to you. (It's really obnoxious that the
Mozilla team built the Windows install assuming a Visual Studio
machine. I'm a web developer. I have to run Windows. That doesn't
mean I want to run MS development software.)

-David

Hi All,

I noticed the comment about Aptana being a bit too bulky for the
task...we're definitely bigger than the standard text editor, but we
do give some nice benefits, such as outlining of the JS source code,
formatting (in the latest nightly builds) and Firebug integration so
you can debug inside the IDE or inside Firebug. Perhaps more than you
need right now, but please check us out again if your needs change.

Thanks!
Ingo

[Peter Michaux]

On Oct 3, 10:59 am, David Golightly <[e-mail]:

I'm a web developer. I have to run Windows.

If you are a web developer then you must run browsers on a variety of
operating systems. It doesn't mean you must develop on Windows. I do
all my development on OS X and use Parallels Desktop to test on other
operating systems. I think this is the best system for front-end
development because Parallels work so well now.

Peter