14 DAY TRIAL // The Eclipse Foundation has been quietly developing a pretty solid Web-based development tool called Orion, all without the media hype that surrounded GitHub's Atom editor.
Compared to Atom, Orion is so much more, providing, besides the code editing features, a powerful platform for code hosting and project management, complete with Git integration and a Web-based shell.
All of these under Eclipse's famous open-source license (EPL) and also benefiting from updates from its staff, who keep the code free of bugs and constantly add new features.
A new JavaScript code analysis tool
The new Orion 9.0 comes with a few cool features, but as the team puts it, "JavaScript tooling was the focus throughout the release."
The major change was Tern, a code analysis tool built on jQuery's Esprima JavaScript code parser, which will now help developers check for code errors as soon as they start typing.
Tern will not only check the current file's code but is also capable of fetching dependencies via require() and define() calls, packaging the results into nice tooltips that can be turned on or off using a keyboard shortcut.
Lots of UI-related updates are included with Orion 9.0
Besides the addition of Tern, changes were also made to the editor's theming capabilities, with new options for tweaking the editor’s syntax highlighting and various other UI elements.
Orion now comes with split view support as well, a feature present in most desktop IDEs, allowing developers to view two files at once, without switching between tabs all day.
A darker default theme was announced in May, and this is the first major Orion version to use it. If you liked the older white skin more, you can still reactivate it from somewhere in the settings panel.
If you want to get your hands on the Orion IDE, you can download it from Softpedia right now.
