Online text editors
tl;dr Just a quick intro to a new category of upcoming online code editors.** The web is moving forward. The browser is the ultimate killer app. With new HTML5 technologies and some Javascript magic one can do really sophisticated applications in it. You can DO things in the browser. Why open a desktop word processor, when you can open just another tab? We see that online code sharing, debugging tools like: JSfiddle, JSBin, Dabblet, CSSDeck, jsdoit, Gist are rising. Where is the browser based full featured text editor for code and markup, the thin IDE? The idea is not so new. Did you know that Heroku started with code in the cloud, an online text editor? The Coding Monkeys created SubEtha (and SubEthaEdit) in 2003. But here are three promising startups (of course all from the valley) willing to fill this gap:
- action.io > on RWW / Review by Derrickko / Angel List
- c9.io > also on GitHub
- koding.com > on TC / Angel List
I have to admit that i haven't tried one of them yet. I am curious how Git integration will be handled or if Git is no longer needed? I also can't imagine that an online text editor is as fast as something like Sublime Text 2, but let's see. For us, as a PaaS, it is interesting to see how the hosting environment will be integrated. Last click goes to Brackets which is also a Javascript based text editor. But this one runs on the desktop and is open source and from Adobe!