GitHub published the GitHub Web Editor on 2021.08.12. Get down to the whole experience and briefly discuss your feelings and opinions.

No more words, first look at the entrance: warehouse arbitrary sub page; The entry mode is switched by the shortcut key (period in English), and you can automatically switch when you press it.

1. Product experience

The overall product experience is much faster and smoother than Codespaces.

  1. The GitHub Web Editor is based on the Visual Studio Code 1.59.0 kernel. The product positioning is in the middle of warehouse to cloud IDE, based on Codespaces scenario evolution, the overall experience is lighter and faster.
  2. Loading speed compared to Codespaces greatly improved. Before the use of Codespaces is very slow, but also often out of line. In terms of browser requests, there are many fewer direct requests to Azure cloud services. Well, Azure is really slow in China.
  3. [Key points] GitHub supports users to switch to the GitHub Web Editor from any sub-page in any repository by using the English period shortcut. The entry is very flexible.
  4. 【 Key 】 non-own warehouse can Fork+PR operation, do not need to break away from the interface.
  5. Remore Explorer provides direct access to GitHub Codespaces and GitHub Repositories. You do not need to leave the interface to manage IDE and all open GitHub Web Editor Repositories. This is a powerful feature.

Ii. Plug-in capability support of VSCode

Most plug-ins currently do not support running in this environment, including various language plug-ins, editor multilanguage support. GitHub prioritizes and ports various snippet tips, mainstream style themes, and shortcut presets. On a more important note, GitHub has adapted the GitHub Pull Requests and Issues plug-in, enabling seamless task collaboration and code collaboration (including non-own repositories) in the editor.

  1. Most plug-ins are not supported to run
  2. Priority adaptation and porting of various snippet hints, mainstream style themes, shortcut key default plug-ins
  3. GitHub Pull Requests and Issues plugin for seamless task/code collaboration

Three, in the IDE capabilities and features

  1. The file management section only provides management capabilities limited to the current repository and does not support opening other files on the IDE hosting service
  2. – Currently there is no cloud IDE locale support (not a full cloud IDE, but it will be done visually, just not in the current version)
  3. Terminal function not provided (castration cloud host file management + castration development environment support)

Based on the above information, we can infer the implementation and subsequent actions of GitHub:

  1. For a better experience, Web Editor is positioned somewhere in the middle of a repository to a cloud IDE that satisfies both capabilities and experience. It actively removes development locale support and is a lite version of a cloud IDE, rather than a purely browser-based editor.
  2. The development language environment will be supported, Terminal will be supported, and IDE features may be achieved by connecting to another environment in the cloud (without affecting the Web Editor preload experience), which is also a trend in the future.
  3. The goal, of course, is still to sell more cloud resources, the IDE will be free, but the development environment will probably be charged (offering an online IDE at a low cost and making money from language compilation environment support).

Finally, let’s take a look at some partial images from the GitHub Web Editor

  • The main interface

  • The entry to the GitHub repository is hidden in the menu

  • Debugging is not currently supported, presumably because the cloud development environment has been castrated

  • Limited plug-in support

  • GitHub Codespaces and GitHub Repositories switch

  • The GitHub Pull Requests and Issues plug-in is integrated by default