JSBin a super sweet online HTML and JavaScript editor | Hacker News Reader

JSBin a super sweet online HTML and JavaScript editor

jsbin.com

47 pointsmjakl11 comments

Hi, I'm the author of jsbin (launched back in 2008) and version 3 is in the works: http://jsbin.com/3/ (though just an open beta).

Interesting feedback in the comments here, just wanted to address some of them:

"where it contains infinite loops" - v3 now strips JavaScript by default, and binds ctrl+enter to run the output with JS. You can optionally enable live JS rendering now too.

"cmd+1/2/3" - v3 has 5 panels now so it takes over even more keys, and although I coded it up, I'm kinda with you that I don't like that I'm expecting to get to a tab rather than a paenl - yet sometimes I like being able to control which panels. I'm considering other shortcuts - maybe optionally disable panel shortcuts (or opt-in?) - but equally open to feedback: http://github.com/remy/jsbin/issues

"tabs" + "stupid auto-formatting" - that's down to CodeMirror being used - and a long while ago I wrote a textarea version of the editor (which kicks in if you're viewing on Android, iPad, etc) - again, this might be a opt-in preference, but I use CM to ensure far reaching IE support because JSBin is primarily a teaching tool, and if a developer is stuck in IE7/8 they need to replicate the bug in that version of IE in jsbin (which is why I can't use ACE, et al).

"ubuntu bugs" - I need to get an Ubuntu virtual machine and check this out - I've heard of a few people having problems in similar environments so I should really check it out.

Anyway, cheers for the feedback (albeit inadvertently :)

I experimented with making a live updating HTML editor before, and one of the biggest problems with it is that sometimes your code will go through an intermediate stage, while you're typing it, where it contains infinite loops.

Now, if you could use JS.js¹ to sandbox the javascript in a webworker so that it never blocks the editor, and kill+reload every time you enter a key, well that would be cool.

1: http://tatiyants.com/introducing-js-js/

JSBin has without a doubt the most annoying and invasive coding interface I've ever used. I find myself often copy/pasting directly from a text editor to avoid the stupid auto-formatting.

That said, its easy customization and lack of script bloat means that it's more portable (Opera on Mint kills any bloated script).

Pressing tab is buggy. It assumes that tab means "indent" when in fact maybe you just want to insert a tab.

How does this compare with http://plunker.no.de? It is also open source (on github) and seems to have been inspired by JSBin.

You can see the next release of JSBin at http://jsbin.com/3/ lots of nice improvements.

I frequently use Cmd+1/2/3 to jump to my pinned tabs in Chrome. JS Bin overwrites these with its own shortcuts. Terrible bit of UI/UX.

I think most people don't use either shortcut, but that the ones who would use jsbin's shortcut are likely to use the browser shortcut. So it's not a great feature. I wouldn't call it terrible because it's only a problem for a small fraction of users.

Ace Editor is much worse, in that it overrides the Cmd+L key, on sites that have merely embedded it. https://github.com/ajaxorg/ace/issues/210 At least with JSBin, you might be able to get used to its overriding by noticing that you're on JSBin.

Been a while since I looked at JSBin, looks like it's had some nice improvements. I really like the realtime preview and the linting of your JS while you edit.

Why this over jsfiddle?

I like jsfiddle, too (and jsdo.it). One nice thing about jsbin though is that it is open source (on github).

However, I don't know about others, but at the moment jsbin.com doesn't work at all for me (chrome beta, ubuntu) - can't see any text I type, just blank white on the bottom 90% of the screen. It does work in firefox.

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