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Web based Textmate like editor that saves to Dropbox

288 points| jkatka | 15 years ago |chrome.google.com | reply

91 comments

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[+] stevejohnson|15 years ago|reply
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!

[+] ErrantX|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] rbxbx|15 years ago|reply
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 :)

[+] sudont|15 years ago|reply
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?)
[+] BerislavLopac|15 years ago|reply
How difficult it is to create a repo on the folder in your Dropbox? (The answer, of course, is "it isn't"...)
[+] patrickk|15 years ago|reply
It would be cool if you could share screens from two people not in the same room too.
[+] yafujifide|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] joshuarr|15 years ago|reply
This is really cool. I have absolutely no use for it.
[+] auston|15 years ago|reply
My gf just got a Chrome OS notebook from Google - that is probably the best use case for it.
[+] heffay|15 years ago|reply
So how is this web based? I have to install chrome and a plugin?
[+] JoelSutherland|15 years ago|reply
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_chau|15 years ago|reply
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!)

[+] jroes|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] mkilling|15 years ago|reply
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?
[+] DanI-S|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] berberich|15 years ago|reply
Something like this is perfect when using Chrome OS.
[+] DanI-S|15 years ago|reply
I want this to interface to GitHub. That would be badass.
[+] mattmillr|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] ffffruit|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] askar|15 years ago|reply
Can't agree with you enough! Do the developers of Textmate ever listen to these demands?
[+] Timmy_C|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] loevborg|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] navs|15 years ago|reply
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.

[+] 27182818284|15 years ago|reply
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|reply
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.
[+] murrayb|15 years ago|reply
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?

[+] quinndupont|15 years ago|reply
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.
[+] euroclydon|15 years ago|reply
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|reply
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.