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ActiveState Activates Komodo 4.0


By Alex Handy
January 15, 2007 — 
Who knew Mozilla could be an IDE? Komodo 4.0, an integrated development environment from ActiveState, will be ready for prime time before the end of this month. The Mozilla-based software will bring new client-side capabilities to what has traditionally been a server-focused development environment, and also adds new debugging capabilities for JavaScript coders.

The Komodo IDE was last updated late in 2005. Since then, according to the company, the IDE’s user base has asked for a laundry list of new features. Chief among these was a new path toward testable PHP applications. Eric Promislow, a senior developer of Komodo, said that prior to version 4.0, PHP code was difficult to test and manage.

“PHP has a complicated .ini file, so we’ve worked on making that easier to deal with,” he said.

Ruby on Rails was also a key target for the updated Komodo IDE. “One of the major problems we solved is that a lot of developers use template files that contain HTML markup and embedded code. We built a subsystem that lets people define the languages. We’re shipping with eight different formats,” said Promislow, adding that those eight formats include Ruby mixed with HTML and Python mixed with HTML, also known as Django.

“Komodo is aware of which part of the file [developers are] editing. You get code completion, you get tag completion, and you get the auto indenting. Up to this point, most developers have preferred to use something like Vim, because these editors don’t do anything,” said Promislow. He added that the Komodo team did its best to keep features from getting in developers’ way, thus hoping to lure programmers away from command-line editors.

DYNAMIC WEB
That philosophy extends to IDE’s new AJAX and DOM tooling. Komodo 4.0 adds a DOM inspector and AJAX debugging tools that can be used with active server connections. Promislow said that Komodo can jump in between a server and its client, and inject code dynamically before it arrives at its destination. This helps developers who are testing or experimenting with layouts, he said.

“You can be in the middle of debugging JavaScript, and you can drop to the interactive shell and drop AJAX code in there dynamically,” said Promislow. “You can change an image or add a paragraph interactively, rather than making a change in the editor.”

For future releases, extensibility will play a key role, said Matt Herdon, product manager for Komodo. He said that because Komodo is based on Mozilla, and is very similar to Firefox in architecture, the IDE can be extended in the same manner as the browser. With version 4.0, ActiveState has exposed this extensibility to third-party developers for the first time.

The US$295 Komodo 4.0 will run under Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. While previous versions of the IDE have run under Solaris, Komodo 4.0 will not be brought to that operating system, said Herndon, due to lack of interest from customers.


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