We are excited to announce that the Komodo 8.0 beta is now available for both Edit and IDE. With 8.0.0b1, we are nearing the end of our pre-release build cycle, which will lead to the official Komodo 8.0 release in early 2013.
Here is an overview of the major features included in the 8.0 beta.

User Interface Styling

We’ve revamped the Komodo user interface. The toolbars, statusbars and side panes have all been updated, the editor schemes have been tweaked, and we’ll continue to improve the styling throughout the Komodo 8 release series. However, the old Komodo 7 styling is still selectable in preferences, along with a myriad of new icon sets.

Floating Side Panes (Undocking)

You now get the ability to detach individual side pane tabs (Places, Code Browser, Debug, Find Results, Breakpoints, etc.) into their own separate window. For example, you can put your debugging pane on a completely separate monitor screen (if you’re lucky enough to have multiple monitors).

Auto Abbreviations

Komodo now provides automatic triggering for a selected group of toolbox abbreviations (snippets). This makes developing code faster, smarter and easier, with the user in complete control of the content being inserted. The screenshot below shows a Python auto abbreviation after typing “class” (note the space) and then tabbing between the different positions.

Conditional Snippets

It’s now possible to use JavaScript code within a snippet, so you can programatically determine the snippet contents at runtime. Komodo allows the use of Embedded JavaScript (EJS) inside of the snippet text, which will be dynamically executed inside of Komodo’s JavaScript environment. As such, it has full access to the Komodo JavaScript API.

Mini-Map

Sitting right next to your editor scrollbar, the mini-map gives a high-level (10,000 foot) view of your code. It gives just enough details to allow you to quickly scroll and re-position the editor on a targeted section of code.

Fast Open Shortcuts

When using the fast open dialogue, you can now make a shortcut to frequently used files and directories. For example, given the directory “/some/long/path/to/my/code”, you can make a shortcut called “code”. Then, using the fast open dialogue, simply type “code/” to see all the files in this directory without the need to type out the full path.

Other Features

There are many more items we’ve added in this release, including:

  • Open Files Side Pane
  • Retina Support – Mac OS X
  • Fast Open Shortcuts
  • New Languages (Laravel Blade – a PHP templating language, and Sass – syntex checking added)
  • Updated Code Base (Mozilla 18, Python 2.7, Scintilla 3.2.4, Cocoa 64-bit on Mac)

You can view the release notes for the full list of updates.
Komodo IDE 8.0 beta:
Create a free account on the ActiveState Platform to try Komodo IDE and Edit today!
We look forward to hearing your feedback (good and bad), so please let us know how you feel and what you’d like to see improved.