Question

What is a decent IDE for developing JavaScript, I'll be writing both client side stuff and writing for Rhino. Ideally It needs to run on Mac OSX, although something that runs on Windows too would be nice.

ADDITIONAL:

Having had a play with both js2 and Aptana, I think I'll be continuing to use Aptana. Mainly because I find emacs a bit hard to get my head round, although I did think that the error hi-lighting in js2 was better than that in Aptana.

I'm still looking for a way to visually debug my js code that is running atop Rhino...

Was it helpful?

Solution

Aptana IDE, absolutely. Stable, great syntax support for all the major javascript libraries, very good css and html editors. Also good support for php, air, ruby on rails and iPhone app development (I never tested this one). Aptana can also connect to remote site via ftp (sftp in the pro edition) and to svn and cvs repositories. It's based on Eclipse, so it's not exactly a lightweight application. But it's really, really good. You can also use it as an Eclipse plugin if you develop java wab app, but when I tested it in this version, about 1 year ago, it was not stable. Much better to use the standalone version.

OTHER TIPS

If you're familiar with Emacs Steve Yegge's js2-mode could be worth a look.

Aptana Studio, both standalone and Eclipse plugin versions were quite ok last time I used them.

I have found the Spket Eclipse plugin very useful.

Take a look at WebStorm HTML/JavaScript Editor. It's lightweight and runs on MacOS. It supports debugging and running your code right from IDE and has very smart autocompletion capabilities for JavaScript both DOM-based and browser-based.

Komodo Edit/IDE is definitely the best IDE/editor (that I have used) for developing JavaScript.

Notable features include live error reporting, JavaScript macros and syntax auto-complete for ALL major frameworks!

If you have a very big application written in Javascript, there's only IntelliJ Idea. It parses multiple Javascript files and highlights not only syntax errors but undeclared variables and functions, allows to jump from function call to function definition, and more.

I've tried Emacs (because that's my favorite editor) and Komodo, and they don't come close. I guess it's the same for Eclipse.

Personally, I think that superior parsing and navigation abilties of Idea are only required when you're working with crappy undocumented code, otherwise I'd happily write the code in Emacs using js2-mode, but I'm working with huge poorly documented and buggy framework and it really helps to be able to jump to the source of the function or superclass to check how they work.

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