JS-IDE 1.3.2 is designed to be a simple editor for creating HTML/JavaScript pages. The current version includes a minimal JavaScript syntax checker to try to catch some common errors.

Quick Links:
Installing JS-IDE
Starting JS-IDE
Viewing pages in the browser
Checking files for problems
Known problems and other comments


Installing JS-IDE

Steps to install:

Starting JS-IDE

After starting JS-IDE, you will see the following screen:
JS-IDE Main Window

Most of the menu commands are similar to what you find in NOTEPAD or most other editors, so I won't describe those here.  Most of the toolbar buttons should also be familiar to people who have used Word or many other Windows applications.  One menu item that may not be familiar is "Edit", "Go to Line" (also reachable by using the keyboard shortcut Control-G).  This will prompt for a line number, select that line and display it in the edit window.

When the program brings up a new page, it will display the HTML skeleton shown above.  You can then edit that text to produce your desired HTML/JavaScript page.

Viewing pages in the browser

Once you have completed your HTML/JavaScript page, you can press the Run Button button or use the menu item "Run", "View in Browser".  The program will do a quick check for potential problems (see below), and then bring the window up in Internet Explorer.  If IE gives you an error message with a specific line number, you can use "Edit", "Go to Line" to jump to that part of your program.  Otherwise you can try out your page, and see if it does what it should.  After viewing the page, you can either close Internet Explorer, or use the task bar to switch back to JS-IDE.  If you try to view the page again, JS-IDE will (try to) close the existing IE window and open a new window with the modified file.

Note that in order to make pictures and external scripts work correctly, the file will be saved (in the origional folder) before the browser window is opened.

Checking files for problems

The current version of JS-IDE is designed to check for common errors.  If you declare a variable trycount, and then try to use the variable try_count, JS-IDE will give a warning.  However, JS-IDE is stricter than JavaScript here, in that if you don't declare try_count at all, JS-IDE will report a warning, even though this is legal in JavaScript.

To do only a check, you can use the menu item "Run", "Check File", or try to view the page in the browser.  If anything suspicious is found, a message window will be displayed with the problems found.  Double-clicking on any line will bring up the corresponding source window and hilight the line mentioned in the message.  Note that line numbers may be off if you add or remove any lines in the HTML/JavaScript page.

Note that you request to view the page in a browser, JS-IDE will save the page and normally start up Internet Explorer with that page. If serious problems were found, it will ask you first if you want to try to load the page in Internet Explorer anyway. You may also want to use line numbers provided as part of Internet Explorer's error messages to help you locate errors.

Closing a file edit window will automatically close any message window associated with that page.

Known problems and other comments

The JavaScript checker will complain about some constructs that are valid JavaScript.  Many of these may result in warnings in legal JavaScript code.  You should look at the line in question, and decide if the warning is valid or not.  We have tried to avoid the number of situations in which a false warning is given.  On the other hand, there are some areas that are not checked, and faulty code may not result in any warnings.

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