Anyone have experience with Mozilla’s new online editor, Thimble. It looks like a competitor to CodePen.
For that matter, can we complete FCC projects in tools other than CodePen, Thimble for instance?
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You can complete the projects however you want. As long as everybody can acces/view them.
Being able to have multiple JS, CSS files is pretty cool. I don’t there’s an issue with doing the projects on Thimble.
Honestly though, I don’t see why this site is necessary. CodePen has a great existing community, and it pretty much does the same thing.
Being able to use your own images is definitely a pro!
Oh that’s genuinely cool. A lot of people get confused choosing an option to host images, and this is pretty convenient then. I tried it out a bit, and I really like how it highlights an element when you go through its HTML. I love CodePen, but this is genuinely a great alternative. More people should know about this.
Hadn’t even heard of this til clicking that link, thanks for sharing! It’s interface is really nice and I like the file browser addition on the left. Might keep it in the bookmarks and play around with it at the weekend.
The ability to create tutorials on Thimble gives it a huge advantage over CodePen, at least in the long run. I also like the interface way, way better. The lack of a transpiler and Emmet-style shortcuts makes it more of a pain in the arse than I’d like to put up with for now. Given time, I think it will be the clear choice between the two.
Not only the HTML. It also highlights elements targeted by CSS selectors, which is neat.
I’d probably use this when I want to try something real quick. CodePen feels sluggish for me. Then again, like @P1xt said, the lack of one-click options is a bummer.
Another good one is https://repl.it - just found it recently - I was looking for a place where to test code in a console, without using browsers. This site works great - and you can use it even without signing up. Also, they support lots of other languages. Of course - I do understand that it is better to test Javascript in a browser, but for quick stuff or for stuff you want to experiment with or see how code reacts to different inputs - repl.it works well.
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I have tried Thimble and it looks great. But if you are no a slow internet connection better stick with codepen. Thimble takes a lot of time to load!
We have to add libraries manually?
To be fair to Codepen, it’s not really meant for huge projects. It’s made to test out small parts of a project or showcase something neat you came up with, and it does it very well.
However, since FCC projects can get relatively large, especially the React ones (like the dungeon crawler), I hope the site starts recommending alternatives like Plunker or Thimble for anyone who doesn’t want to work locally for those projects.
Although, I’d honestly just recommend anyone working on something that large to just switch to local development and getting gulp working. It’s so much better.