We’ve completed most of the big feature work for Komodo IDE 9, and we’ll mainly
be focusing on bug fixes and polishing for the final release, so please help us
out by giving Komodo 9 beta a try and report any issues you run into.
We’ll also continue making nightly releases from here on out, to make it easy
for Komodo 9 pre-release users to keep up to date.
You can try Komodo for free by creating an account on the ActiveState Platform.
Just remember, this is beta software – which means it’s not thoroughly hardened and will contain bugs… as such, please report any problems you run into on our bug tracker.
What’s New
Here is a list of the major features and product changes made in Komodo 9:
Track Changes
The editor has gained a new left margin – which highlights unsaved changes, as well as any uncommitted SCC changes. Clicking on the margin will show a diff dialog of the changes – as well as letting you revert individual changes! Sweet!
Markdown Viewer
For Markdown files, Komodo provides a preview of the generated HTML directly within a Komodo split view and contents will dynamically update itself whenever you make a change to the Markdown text – it doesn’t even need to be saved. You can check out the markdown blog post for more details on this feature.
Go Programming Language Support
Golang is now becoming supported in Komodo. We provide syntax coloring, code folding, syntax checking (linting) and code intelligence with completions, calltips, outline and goto definition for .go files. Please check out the golang blog post for more details on this support.
Commando
This popup dialog is the combined successor of the Fast Open and Invoke Tool dialogs in Komodo 8. Commando provides fuzzy matching, match highlighting, search for files (find any file under a folder), toolbox search, bookmark integration, shortcuts (go-tool) integration as well as custom category filtering.
Kopy.io Helper
Now you can easily share snippets of code with other people (like pastebin)
directly from Komodo. Simple make a text selection and use the editor
right-click context menu and choose Share Code via Kopy.io. Even better is that Kopy.io supports client side encryption, so you can make those shared pastes more secure.
Notifications UI
Notification messages shown to the user now appear in a separate popup panel that overlays the main Komodo editor window (previously they appeared in the Komodo statusbar). Komodo also has notification preferences, allowing you to control which messages get displayed in the popup panel.
Icons
Most of the icons in Komodo user interface have been updated to use improved images or to use a consistent style. We’ve tweaked the file icons, language icons, places icons, toolbox icons, preference page icons and code intelligence icons (completions, sections list, code browser).
Editor Color Schemes
We’ve changed all the default Komodo color schemes. All Komodo color schemes now use Base16, that is, they are based on a set of 16 different base colors, which are then re-used in different parts of that scheme.
We also added the ability to tweak the editor line height spacing, which is now saved in the color scheme preferences page.
Menu Bar
The Komodo main menu bar (i.e. the File, Edit, …) is now hidden by default on Windows and Linux. You can use the Alt key to toggle the menu visibility, or force it be always displayed through the View > Toolbars menu.
Whilst the top-level menu is hidden, a unified menu button will be visible in the top-right of the Komodo toolbar, or if the toolbar is also hidden, then it will appear in the Komodo view status bar.
PHP 5.6 Support
We’ve added support for PHP 5.6, with a new Xdebug module (for PHP debugging and Code Profiling), updates for keyword changes and updates to code intelligence to provide the latest API data for PHP 5.6.
Python Updates
Python 3.4 is fully supported for syntax checking, debugging, code intelligence, etc…
We’ve added PEP 8 syntax checking – you can enable this in the Python Syntax Checking preferences. For those that don’t know – PEP 8 is the official Style Guide for Python Code.
Komodo Developer APIs
We’ve been overhauling the Komodo APIs, to make it easier to load and access the
methods inside of Komodo. We’re now making use of CommonJS (aka Node.js)
require() calls to load individual modules – you can see the full list of
supported modules in the Komodo sdk directory. Examples of use and more
information can be found in the Komodo wiki.
We’ve also added convenient console.log() and friends support – the messages show up in the Komodo notifications pane.
There are other changes that Komodo Add-on developers should be aware of – we’ve been documenting these major changes on our Komodo wiki page.
Performance Tweaks
We’ve made a bunch of performance tweaks to Komodo 9 already – with more to
follow. So far we’ve been concentrating on two main areas:
- Startup – we’ve managed to improve Komodo startup times by around 15%.
- Editor typing speed – various editing features have been improved, which should be most noticeable in larger files, especially HTML/XML.
- Search – improved performance of find next/previous calls
- Syntax Checking – Faster syntax checking times
Miscellaneous
- Statusbar moved – it’s now attached to the bottom of the editor view (and not to the bottom of the window)
- Preferences page – now has simple and advanced modes
- Startpage – now removed – a Quick Launch page is now displayed when no views are opened
- Custom workspaces – can be saved and loaded on demand, use the File > Workspace menu
- High DPI – should work correctly on Windows – no blurred fonts
- Tab width – the indentation preference has changed from 8 spaces to 4 spaces
- Commit dialog – now displays the current branch name
- Menus – various menus were re-organised, including tab and editor context menus
- Sections list – has merged with breadcrumbs widget
- Copy find results – which can be used via the toolbar in the find results widget
- Primary language cleanup – less used languages like (XBL, XUL, Luddite) no longer appear in the main menu – though your free to adjust these in the Komodo Languages preferences.
- Mozilla 31 – Komodo is now built on top of the Mozilla 31 code base
- Analytics – We now analyze how our users use Komodo to help us improve our product. This is entirely optional and we do not track user specific information. You can view our Analytics code on github.
Questions?
Q: When will Komodo 9 be released?
A: We’ve not set a firm deadline – but it will likely be early next year.
Q: What else is coming in Komodo 9?
A: This is most of the big feature plans we have for Komodo 9, we’ve got a
few other things planned, but mostly the focus will be on bug fixes and polish
until Komodo 9 final is released.
Q: What about Komodo Edit?
A: Komodo Edit builds are not being released yet – they will be included later in the preview cycle – as we wanted to start with the focus being on Komodo IDE.
Q: I have more questions!
A: Talk to us directly on the forums!
