The TSW Blog

I've made a new file properties dialog for WebCoder, which will show more relevant information for a code file. Here's an example of it in action:

I think that this is useful, and definitely pretty interesting, for your various project files, but getting statistics for the entire project will likely be even more interesting. Therefore I made a dialog for that as well:

So, what do you think? Pretty cool, right? :)

WebCoder has supported previewing your content internally in Firefox for several versions now. It relies on the so-called XulRunner components, which are a part of the Firefox browser. At one point, it was enough to simply have Firefox installed to use this feature, but because Firefox are being updated so rapidly these days, WebCoder can't rely on the user having a compatible version of Firefox installed. Therefore, previous WebCoder versions had a link to a compatible XulRunner package, exclusively for previewing in WebCoder - a simple zip file, that you could unpack and then enter the proper path into WebCoder.

However, this might have been a bit too technical and too big a bother for some users, judging by the support mails I got. I therefore decided to streamline the process quite a bit for WebCoder 2012, by presenting the user with a dedicated and informative dialog instead of the old Windows message box. Here's how it looks when you try to activate the Firefox preview without having the necessary XulRunner components:

Unless you have already downloaded the correct XulRunner package, you simply click the Download now button and WebCoder will download it for you directly through the dialog:

As soon as the download finishes, WebCoder will automatically unzip the package, place it within your WebCoder installation and fill out the path for you:

The only thing left to do for you is to click the Ok button and you're ready to start previewing in Firefox :)

This is yet another one of those small, nice-to-have improvements that I hope you will like!

In the previous blog post we talked about the new scripting support with JavaScript syntax, which allows you to extend the functionality of the upcoming WebCoder. Scripting is a really powerful tool, but unfortunately it has previously been a bit hard to learn and use, because you had to use an unfamiliar syntax AND use a class library (.NET) that you likely didn't know.

With WebCoder 2012, we hope to solve the first problem by changing the syntax to JavaScript and the second one with scripting IntelliSense. That's right, writing scripts in WebCoder 2012 just got a whole lot easier. Here's a couple of screenshots that will demonstrate just how cool it is.

The all-round IntelliSense, with JavaScript objects and methods, .NET namespaces and classes and WebCoder classes and methods.

Member IntelliSense, in this case for a .NET string, showing the available methods and properties.

Parameter hints, in this case for the Substring method on the .NET String class.

As you can see, you will now get a lot of help when you write scripts in WebCoder, making it a lot easier to use all the powerful features from the .NET class library as well as the internal functionality of WebCoder. Hope you like it :)