Komodo 10.1 Webinar – Q&A

On September 8th, Nathan and myself (Carey) did a webinar on Komodo 10.1. We wanted to show off the new tutorial tool and the other great features we’d introduced in 10.1 and also provide an overview of Komodo X for those of you who’d missed the previous webcast.

As usual, I’ve compiled all the questions that were asked during the presentation and documented them in this blog so that everyone can benefit from the answers. You can also view the webinar, in its entirety, here:

**1. How do you add GULP to Komodo like you did on the sidebar?**
This was a great segue question in the webinar. I almost felt like someone from ActiveState had joined the webinar just to plug a cool new feature, that feature being the Dynamic Toolbar. The “sidebar” the user asked about is just that; a Dynamic Toolbar which loads buttons contextually rather than always showing buttons regardless of what you’re doing. In this case, Nathan had a project open which used Gulp, NPM and Cordova and caused the Dynamic Toolbar to load a button for each.

Assuming you have a properly configured environment for that tool, there is nothing you need to do to enable the buttons in Komodo. Komodo automatically detects that your project supports that tool and shows you the button.

It’s as simple as that.

**2. Can all Komodo 10.1 projects be opened and edited with earlier versions (for example, Komodo 8)?**
The Komodo project file template hasn’t changed since Komodo 7 so you can open a *.komodoproject file in any Komodo between 7 and (as of Sept 16, 2016) 10.*

**3. Is there a way to see the file/directory history?**
Komodo doesn’t currently save file history. We thought that this was the job of the Source Code Control tool that you or your team maybe using but we’re beginning to come around to the idea that we may not know everything and that this might actually be a pretty cool tool to have. It’s in our sights for a future version of Komodo

**4. Is there a reason that keybindings are not consistent across Mac/Windows/Linux?**
Yes. I’m actually interested to know if the person who asked this has ever used a program that did have this. I want to high five that team and potentially recommend a good counsellor for mental stress. I’m going to try and break this up into points so it’s more…. to the point:

  • Each OS has it’s own traditional standard/expected bindings (eg, Copy on Linux and Windows = `Ctrl + C`. Copy on OSX is `Cmd + C`). If we did `Ctrl + C` on OSX I think OSX users would kill us.
  • Each OS has it’s own set of keybindings that often clobber expected bindings in Komodo. Example: *Cmd + /* to comment in OSX, so you would logically do `Cmd + Shift + /` to uncomment. NOPE, that’s the OSX keybindings to open application help. That works properly on Linux and Windows just fine.
  • Some keybinding combination just don’t work on some systems. The combination isn’t interpreted or passed along for whatever reason so Komodo can’t use it at all.

With those 3 issues you can see that it would be nearly impossible to create a universal binding set. Having said that though, we DO strive to make them consistent across platforms as much as possible. One thing to note is that we (and other applications) follow a general pattern that *Cmd* on OSX = *Ctrl* on Linux and Windows.

**5. I had a lot of trouble with the default colors, especially the “find” highlighting. It was hard to figure out exactly which items to change in the theme editor to make things visible. How can I do this?**
This was also an awesome segway question for use to show off the updates to the Color Scheme Editor. This is extremely simple now: Open the Color Schemes Editor (*Tools menu > Color Scheme Editor*) and in the right most dropdown menu make sure you have **Editor** selected. In that list look for **Find Highlight**. Here you can configure how exactly you would like find results to be highlighted for you. I typically change mine to a red color with Box outline.

**6. I know there is a publishing tool, but it would still be nice to drag and drop to a server to upload your files (new plugin/framework for a site). Otherwise, the FTP application [Publishing Interface] would have to be opened up for each of the servers (at least for the smaller sites that don’t use publishing tool).**
With updates that came with Komodo 10.1, you can now push or force push things from the Places pane so there is no need to open the Publishing dialog if you really don’t want to open it. As always though, if the workflows we support doesn’t work for our users then we encourage everyone to [file enhancement requests](https://github.com/Komodo/KomodoEdit/issues/new) to A. keep track of requests and B. see what the community uptake of the idea is.

**7. Can you add the exclude folder to the publishing path as well?**
Yes. When you set up a publishing configuration there are *includes* and *excludes* fields.

**8. Will you be publishing more tutorials?**
We hope to release new Tutorials with every release. We encourage users to try creating their own as well (eg. Express Server setup Tutorial). Just like any other Toolbox item, Tutorials can be shared on our [Komodo packages page](http://komodoide.com/packages/) for others to install through Commando.

**9. How can I share my color schemes?**
Color Schemes, like toolbox items, can be shared on the [Komodo Packages page](http://komodoide.com/packages/) and contributed to using Github. Have a look at [the instructions on contributing a Package](http://komodoide.com/packages/submit-instructions/#pane-packages) (A package is anything that can be added to Komodo, eg. color schemes, addons, toolbox items, etc.).

**10. What do the performance enhancements in the release notes mean?**
Performance enhancements in all of the Komodo X releases have ranged from improved start up speeds, improved file open and close speeds, overall response time improvements. Specifically in Komodo 10.1 the Source Code Control is now lazily loaded and updated to improve Komodo startup times as well as general performance while using Komodo. To see more performance improvements that have come in Komodo X releases see the [Komodo 10 Changelog](http://komodoide.com/changelog/latest/).

Thanks everyone for the great questions. If you have any more or you’d like to provide feedback on Komodo, head on over to the forums.

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