The latest release of Komodo IDE has a lot of exciting features: notably remote Chrome debugging, greatly improved support for JavaScript frameworks like Angular, Ember and React, and, support for the Cordova and PhoneGap build systems. It also has an extremely friendly first-start wizard that makes configuring it dead easy.
I’ve never been quite satisfied with some aspects of Komodo’s appearance on my primary systems (Debian and Win7) and installing the Komodo X release candidates turned out to be a great opportunity to let the wizard help me tweak the configuration to something more like my imagined ideal. Experienced Komodo users can simply request the classic look and feel, which will make Komodo X as close to previous versions as possible… but better.
We talk a lot about features in software development, but say surprisingly little about fairings. A fairing is a structure that streamlines a vehicle. Without fairings we end up with applications that are as powerful as a main battle tank, but about as awkward to maneuver and as ugly to look at. I won’t name names, but a couple that begin with “E” come to mind.
Komodo has always been a streamlined beast: a tool that gets out of the way and lets us get our job done as developers. Komodo X has a wealth of UI and UX improvements that take this to a new level.
These are simple things, like buttons in Komodo IDE’s dynamic toolbar that are automatically populated to fire up Grunt, git and other external tools that Komodo is aware of when they are found. Things like this have been automated wherever possible so developers can focus on development and not worry about tool configuration.
Features are big obvious things that can easily be seen. Fairings often involve what we can’t see or don’t notice: things that just work. But if you pay careful attention to Komodo X you might be surprised by the number of them you find.
Visible changes include focus mode having its own toggle button that makes it much easier to access. Less visible changes include usability improvements in the source control integration pane, and a greatly expanded set of available keybindings for people more familiar with other IDEs and editors. The first start wizard gives you a chance to set the keybinds without having to find them in the preferences menu.
Komodo X is the latest major release of our powerful, easy-to-use IDE and editor for almost any dynamic language. Whether you’re developing in JavaScript and HTML or Perl or Python, you will have first-class language support in a tool that is both feature rich and fair.
