Web based Textmate like editor that saves to Dropbox

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iieeldjdihkpoapgipfkeoddjckopgjg

by jkatka • 15 years ago

288 91 15 years ago

chrome.google.com

The only thing "Textmate-like" about this Chrome extension is that it has a file list on the left and a tabbed editor on the right.

That said, this looks quite convenient, and I appreciate you bringing it to my attention!

ladon86• 15 years ago

I thought it would only sync to a single folder on my Dropbox, but no, I can edit any text file AND it has syntax highlighting.

Very neat and useful, thanks.

bryanh• 15 years ago

Awesome app, would be even more awesome decoupled into a true webapp.

ebiester• 15 years ago

It would indeed be awesome, except that dropbox still doesn't have a way to sync with true webapps last I checked.

lucraft• 15 years ago

How does this work when Dropbox only allow mobile uses of their API?

joshuarr• 15 years ago

This is really cool. I have absolutely no use for it.

auston• 15 years ago

My gf just got a Chrome OS notebook from Google - that is probably the best use case for it.

trobertson• 15 years ago

That was my initial reaction to this too. But without a compiler/interpreter on hand, this app won't be too useful for any serious coding. You just can't test what you're writing.

On the other hand, this is fantastic for non-code text files.

abp• 15 years ago

Yet.

mkilling2• 15 years ago

I hate being negative, but I really don't see the use case. I have a text editor and Dropbox installed on my machine, why would I want to install this editor?

kristiandupont• 15 years ago

I want it for my ipad..

DanI-S3• 15 years ago

In the context of something like Chrome OS, stuff like this is vital to being able to do meaningful development work. It's also pretty cool to have your personal development environment, settings, etc. immediately accessible from wherever you may be.

mkilling2• 15 years ago

In that context it really does make sense

siika2000• 15 years ago

I still don't get it. I would love to use Dropbox but I can't install it everywhere I go since the installation requires admin rights and I don't have them at the university's computer for example. But I can use SSH and therefore SCP from any computer without admin rights, so I really don't see what this does except eliminate the need for a shell account, which are practically free, heck even VPS's are beginning to be almost free nowadays.

berberich• 15 years ago

Something like this is perfect when using Chrome OS.

giberson• 15 years ago

I just created a dropbox account to test this out. Obviously there are no existing files in it. I looked for a button to create a new file and could not find one.

If dropbox does not have a create file call for you to use, perhaps you could have the app create an empty filename and upload it automatically and then edit it as an existing file?

Edit: Never mind, I finally noticed the buttons on the bottom left. That was quite unintuitive for me--I never look at the bottom left for application buttons. Is this something that textmate does?

Timmy_C2• 15 years ago

There is a way to create new files and folders in the lower left-hand corner if you pull out the tray on the left.

wiredfool2• 15 years ago

I couldn't find it when I was looking. Should probably be a little more obvious, at least early on.

mattmillr• 15 years ago

Looks very promising, it'll be a good companion to the iPhone PlainText app.

Two suggestions: (1) Word-wrap. (2) Let me pick a dark-on-light color scheme.

Timmy_C2• 15 years ago

What kind of syntax highlighting does this app support? I copy/pasted some HTML with script and style tags and none of it got any sort of coloring.

heffay• 15 years ago

So how is this web based? I have to install chrome and a plugin?

jroes• 15 years ago

Sweet. Now rip it out of Chrome and make it work on my phones and tablets!

This is probably best as a web app, not a browser plugin.

jason_slack• 15 years ago

Good start and on my CR-48 opens up some ways for me to develop on the road...

DanI-S3• 15 years ago

I want this to interface to GitHub. That would be badass.

euroclydon• 15 years ago

Speaking of DropBox integration: I have the DropBox App on my iPhone, and the 1Password App too, which has "DropBox integration", but it asks for my DropBox password. Is that the way it's supposed to work? Shouldn't 1Password be able to access DropBox files via the phone itself?

YooLi• 15 years ago

I believe 1Password is just using the Dropbox API, in which case your credentials are indeed needed. I don't think it's possible for 1Password to use the Dropbox App to do the integration with the Dropbox service, at least not at the present time with the way apps are sandboxed.

Sephr5• 15 years ago

The Dropbox API doesn't require your credentials. Just use OAuth, so the only party getting your credentials is Dropbox.

ErrantX3• 15 years ago

Excellent.

Now drop in some version control (mercurial for my own preference :)) and we are onto a winner.

Dropbox is great for syncing between your development machines, but version control is essential for deployment and team development. Combining the two is really powerful.

patrickk• 15 years ago

It would be cool if you could share screens from two people not in the same room too.

sudont2• 15 years ago

Another "feature" would be the ability to use it without dropbox--save functionality removed. I don't have my dropbox password handy, so the app is completely unusable. (HTML"5" database/ javascript localstorage?)

abraham3• 15 years ago

The Dropbox API supports the standard OAuth web flow which just requires you to have an active session on dropbox.com. I put in a feature request so hopefully soon the extension wont ask for passwords anymore.

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

BTW, I'm the author of this software. So I've been trying to figure out how to save things locally for awhile. I realized that HTML5 has a File System API which in Chrome 9 can FINALLY write to the local SANDBOXED environment. This feature is planned!!

rbxbx• 15 years ago

Dropbox does have version control built in, albeit not in the same way which you speak of.

Pretty good way to get people unfamiliar with version control to see the utility of it, though :)

ErrantX3• 15 years ago

Actually no; Dropbox and version control are different ends of the same problem spectrum. Using Dropbox for version control is non-optimal, and Dropbox VC is more backend/invisible to it's use case.

Dropbox is about syncing, as fast as possible and in real time - it is designed for multiple computers but only one concurrent use. So it is really for the individual. Versioning is a form of snap shot that is designed to allow multiple concurrent work (and has benefits for deployment, releases, bug tracking etc.)

The vision should be to see them working together IMO :)

davej• 15 years ago

Sounds like Cloud9: http://run.cloud9ide.com/

JulianMorrison• 15 years ago

They should hook it up to github.

BerislavLopac2• 15 years ago

How difficult it is to create a repo on the folder in your Dropbox? (The answer, of course, is "it isn't"...)

ErrantX3• 15 years ago

Yep, exactly what I do. But it would be nice to run "hg commit -m xxx && hg push" from within this extension. Then I could commit on the move :)

27182818284• 15 years ago

I'm angry at myself for not thinking about the Dropbox portion of the application. I had already thought that a TextMate-like editor for Chrome would be really nice to have, but I couldn't think of a solution for. If I used traditional saving methods, I couldn't figure out why I wouldn't just use emacs, coda, textmate, etc. The Dropbox portion is what makes this app for me.

That

kscaldef• 15 years ago

I guess I still don't understand why I wouldn't just use emacs, etc. I edit files in my Dropbox folder with emacs all the time.

teach• 15 years ago

At my workplace, the workstations are locked down so much that Dropbox can't be installed. This might be a godsend for me.

bowmande• 15 years ago

Great work. Looks really nice.

ffffruit2• 15 years ago

I only wish the real Textmate followed up on the huge list of todo's and feature requests people have been submitting. I think a core update is long overdue.

askar2• 15 years ago

Can't agree with you enough! Do the developers of Textmate ever listen to these demands?

ffffruit2• 15 years ago

Yes, they do.

From what I recall, they are developing version 2.0 in parallel. Relevant post from their blog: http://blog.macromates.com/2010/why-2-0-is-not-developed-in-...

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

I personally hope the likes of SourceKit and Cloud9 IDE and such will someday replace the likes of Textmate and Eclipse. It'll be a dream when you have VCS, documentation, collaboration, IDE / text editor, running environments all be accessible by everything (including your tablets!!)

kayoone2• 15 years ago

doesnt mozilla work on something similar ? http://ace.ajax.org/

it was previously called Bespin and is now part of a cloud based IDE as it seems. Interesting.

dtran• 15 years ago

It looks like SourceKit uses Bespin: Embedded is the excellent Mozilla Bespin (SkyWriter) text editor component

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

To clear this up, I am switching to Ace in my next major release.

rmason• 15 years ago

Got it installed but when I try to access the getting started guide I get format not supported? I have no problem viewing web pdf's, even have Acrobat Pro installed. So what's going on?

navs• 15 years ago

Nice find. Since this is a text editor, it would be nice to just display text files.

PlainText, my favorite iOS app for note-taking, displays all files from a specific folder within Dropbox. It may be limiting to others, having just have one folder but it keeps things organized. I'd like to see this either support that one folder model or alternatively, hide all content (images/video etc) that don't apply to the editor.

micah_moo• 15 years ago

This is really cool, but I'm having some issues here, when I open up a directory more than once the directory's that are in that folder duplicate, like say a folder called css, I have a folder named img in it, if I re-open it then it displays to img folders

yafujifide• 15 years ago

This is fantastic. This is exactly how I foresee the future documents and editing. Dropbox, or something like that, provides the service of saving the files. Then web apps are granted access to them and can edit them. Local storage becomes a cache, and Dropbox is where the files are "really" stored.

The advantage of this, of course, is that all your stuff becomes device-independent. Log in from any device that has web access, and you'll have access to all your apps and all your files.

This is much better than having each web app manage files on their own. For instance, you might have documents saved in Google Docs, notes saved in Evernote and Catch.com, and emails saved somewhere else, etc. It sure would be nice to have a single service provide the file storage so that you always have all your stuff and don't have to worry about some web app going obsolete and losing your data along with it.

Now what I would really like for backwards-compatibility is a web-based Linux environment to access my files. Someone recently created a web app using the HTML 5 canvas element (I think) to run an X GUI. (Anyone remember what this was called and where it is located?) Attach a Linux system and that GUI technology to your Dropbox, and then you have an entire computer that can be accessed from any device. Either the browser itself would load all the files and run them by emulation, or a server could run them natively and just print the results to your browser. Either way, once that becomes possible, I would be able to convert to an all-web environment.

zoomzoom• 15 years ago

I think this might be what you are remembering - cool project.

http://www.catonmat.net/blog/i-am-doing-a-startup.

JoelSutherland• 15 years ago

This is awesome -- but badly needs some interface work. We've built a similar tool for our CMS also on Bespin/Skywriter/Ace. Here is a screenshot:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gethifi/4952045778/

Little things like icons on the left are really helpful when trying to browse a file structure. In any case, I'll likely be using this once and a while in a pinch since I keep all of my client files in Dropbox.

I'm also excited for the Ace update. This appears to be using a pretty old version. Rendering text in the DOM is much faster.

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

It looks like both of us are hitting something here. People seem to be VERY enthusiastic about this. I am very excited to have pieced together some amazing technologies.

Joel, I actually saw your app and thought that it was quite amazing looking (it gave me hope in Ace actually!)

rokhayakebe• 15 years ago

Ok, I would pay for this app.

miniatureape• 15 years ago

I would pay for a performant web-based text editor with vim bindings.

wiredfool2• 15 years ago

s/vim/emacs/

(it had to happen.)

I tried it and keep hitting the basic emacs bindings on the keyboard, and nothing happened.

quinndupont• 15 years ago

It looks handy, but upon realizing that it doesn't actually do very much (beyond simple text editing), I discovered http://kodingen.com (has a Chrome app, but really it just sends you to their website). It looks pretty amazing and fully featured so far.

da5e• 15 years ago

This is very helpful for my CR-48.

mkramlich• 15 years ago

The problem of editing text files, synching them across many machines, versioning them and sharing them via web or email is I think a well-solved problem.

natep• 15 years ago

Even when one or more of the computers is a public machine (ex. in a library)? This would have been great when I was in college and didn't always want to carry my laptop around.

wslh• 15 years ago

Right Click - Inspect Element? Please...

dmd2• 15 years ago

Nice, but you're (egregiously) violating Dropbox API TOS by asking for the user's password.

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

Asking, but not storing.

dmd2• 15 years ago

How about you tell me YOUR dropbox password? I promise I won't store it. I'm just asking.

Sephr5• 15 years ago

Why would I ever give this extension my Dropbox credentials when Dropbox supports OAuth?

askar2• 15 years ago

The only thing I like about this is the code pane as it renders code decent enough. Everything else is a bit unfinished work it looks like. Time to change my Dropbox password then!

netghost• 15 years ago

If anyone is curious about online editors, I recently wrote about Cloud9's Ace Editor, IBM's Orion, and CodeMirror.

http://endofline.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/3-browser-based-ed...

podperson• 15 years ago

Does it "undo" one keystroke at a time?

murrayb• 15 years ago

I'm behind a corporate firewall where Chrome isn't allowed, any-one know of an equivalent which will run on Firefox?

As an aside the Chrome Web Store tantalizingly says "Sorry, we don't support your browser just yet. You'll need Google Chrome to install apps, extensions and themes."- are they planning to go cross-browser at some point or just teasing me?

signa11• 15 years ago

just a quick question here: why using your standard editor and saving stuff onto the 'Dropbox' folder on the local-machine is not sufficient ?

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

I was inspired actually by the CR-48. As your JS engines get faster, these sorts of software would be more relevant. I 1st PERSONAL milestone is to develop this very software with itself rather than Textmate :)

BerislavLopac2• 15 years ago

Where is the Firefox version?

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

I'm collecting these feedbacks and compiling some user stories for SourceKit. Stay tuned!

loevborg• 15 years ago

This is very interesting. I realize I'm in the minority here, but I would love to use something like this for editing English-language text such as articles, letters, and so forth. This requires decent support for line-wrapping, proportional fonts, and configurable line-spacing. I write my documents in markdown and convert it to whatever is needed - ODT or LaTeX - using the fantastic pandoc. I don't actually write a lot of code; I do write a lot of articles.

I also really like vim keybindings, which makes my usecase even more exotic. Web apps might make this niche interesting.

kenneth_chau9• 15 years ago

SourceKit 0.6.2 is OUT! No more asking for email, pass; now with more Dojo and Ace! http://bit.ly/dRvLmb

Web based Textmate like editor that saves to Dropbox

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