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EtherCodes is an interesting code editor for real-time collaboration
Finally, someone has gone and done it: EtherCodes is a mashup of EtherPad and Skywriter (formerly known as Bespin). In simple terms, it's a collaborative, real-time, Web-based code editor, with syntax highlighting for C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, Python, JavaScript, Ruby (yay!), and HTML.
It's currently in alpha, but I've played around with it, and it feels quite solid. It really feels like a hybrid. The familiar EtherPad interface surrounds a text area that is actually Skywriter. And Skywriter has its own command line, which lets you do all sorts of things to your code (convert all tabs to spaces, for example).
You don't get code completion, though, which is a shame. Also, for some reason, EtherCodes won't play nice with Opera -- it wants you to use Firefox 3.5+, Chrome 2.0+, or Safari 4.0+. I'm not really sure why, because Opera has a blazing-fast JavaScript engine. But all in all, I really like this mashup. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, it takes two established technologies and pairs them elegantly.
The mind behind EtherCodes is Gary Yao, who co-authored CKEditor (a well-regarded Rich Text editor for Web applications). I can only hope that EtherCodes will have the same kind of success. It is a much needed product, indeed.
Comments
2
Subscribe to commentsdrumbliusSep 21st 2010 5:14AM
If you'd like to use it in Opera, just choose Mask as Firefox in Site preferences.
meSep 21st 2010 2:12PM
I keep thinking that a full on IDE like Visual Studio with this level of integration to a source control server would be awesome... so two people can actually work in a given code file at once... not just check in and clobber, but collaborate or both view/edit at the same time.