CoffeeTable: A Browser Console for CoffeeScript | Hacker News Reader

CoffeeTable: A Browser Console for CoffeeScript

code.alecperkins.net

92 pointsjashkenas12 comments

Author of the CoffeeScript book here. This is really, really cool! I especially like that there's annotated source (http://code.alecperkins.net/coffeetable/docs/coffeetable.htm...).

A couple of things:

1. I can't seem to add linebreaks in multiline mode; both `Return` and `Shift+Return` submits the command. Looking at the source, I think the problem is that `settings.multi_line` isn't modified when you click the checkbox; only `settings.showing_multi_line` is.

2. It'd be great to have detailed object output instead of just "[object Object]". A simple way to do this would be to run everything through JSON.stringify; or you could go prettier with nested indentation levels and such (there are several existing libs for this).

Thanks for the feedback. First time really using Docco, and now I feel crazy for not using it before.

1. Good catch! I recently did a complete refactor as part of the docco-ification. Thought I caught everything but apparently not. I'll fix that ASAP.

2. Totally agree, and it's already on the todo list: https://github.com/alecperkins/coffeetable/issues/4 Until then, `log` and `dir` are shortcuts for the ordinary console commands.

A temporary workaround for newlines is to copy/paste them in the box. Adding the bookmarklet and then going to http://arcturo.github.com/library/coffeescript/ gives a good way of experimenting with CoffeeScript.

Multi-line mode should be fixed. Now the whole intercepting tab thing is actually useful.

This is a good idea but the UX needs to be tightened up. I'm excited as this is a nice intro to Coffescript. I'm using the bookmarklet.

1. I submit a command, and then the auto suggest pops up after suggesting a giant list of commands that obscures the page i'm on and I can't pick any of them or clear it.

2. How do I pick from the autosuggest? can't click anything.

3. Multi-line mode. How do I submit? no hints? oh, shift-enter? I should have know, i'm a stupid user.

Hope this helps refine it.

Actual auto-complete turned out to be a lot more difficult than I expected, so for now it's just basic suggest. FWIW, backspace when the textarea is empty will toggle the auto-suggest panel. I'm going to add escape as a toggle as well.

There are instructions for submitting, but only when there are no previous commands. (Shame on me.)

Sounds like there are some good things for v0.2 to take care of. I've updated the issues list with these and others: https://github.com/alecperkins/coffeetable/issues/

Thanks!

Author here. I'm more a designer than a coder, so pardon any bugs or other issues. Criticism and suggestions for improvement are more than welcome.

This is just great!

Edit: Just saw you made it a bookmarlet. Now I just have to hope that Google Chrome will also understand coffescript on its console.

FYI Click the fixed button in the top right of the window for the demo. Took me a while to catch that one.

Good point. I've been trying to avoid being obnoxious about it, but for this it's probably better to err on the side of that than too subtle.

Great!

Is there anyway to make this work in the web inspector?

There's another project adding CoffeeScript to the console: https://github.com/orangemug/coffeescript_console

Requires more than just a bookmarklet or script tag, but looks really promising.

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