Release notes: sprint 9

What's new in Sprint 9

We didn't add major new user-visible features in Sprint 9. Our main goals for the sprint were similar to the previous sprint - Continue to make progress on the extensibility architecture of Brackets: research, basic architecture and extensibility API:

• Architecture / Research

  • CEF3 vs. Chromium Content Shell research (Glenn)
    The main question to research was "What does CEF provide over content shell?". [This document] (https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets/wiki/CEF3-vs.-Chromium-Content-Shell) discusses findings on the differences between CEF3 and the Chrome Content Shell, and proposes a plan for moving Brackets from CEF1 to CEF3.
  • Node vs V8 for bridging into native (Glenn, Joel, Raymond)
    The main architectural idea is to implement the Brackets desktop application as a client/server application to leverage existing Node code for cross-platform native features. [This document] (https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets/wiki/Research:-Node.JS-Integration) discusses the findings to understand the benefits and tradeoffs of using Node.JS instead of V8 native extensions (our current solution). Note: "This is research in a very early stage, however a prototype implementation is checked into the node-proxy branches in brackets-cont/brackets and brackets-cont/brackets-app repos".

• Extensibility:

  • [Menus and Keyboard Shortcuts] (https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!searchin/brackets-dev/Menus$20and$20Keyboard$20Shortcuts/brackets-dev/-PfnGtF2npI/_JnDV43y4nMJ) As an extension developer, I want to be able to add custom menus and keyboard shortcuts when my extension is enabled. (Ty, Peter, Randy, Raymond, Jason)

    • Add a menu item: Get a top-level menu by calling Menus.getMenu() with one of the AppMenuBar constants. Then add a menu item using theMenu.addMenuItem(), linking it to your Command id. The menu item's label will be the string name you gave the Command when it was created. As a convenience, addMenuItem() also lets you create a keyboard shortcut for your Command at the same time.
    • Add a keyboard shortcut: To add a keyboard shortcut without any related menu item, call KeyBindingManager.addBinding() directly, linking a shortcut to your Command id.
    • See the [Simple "Hello World" extension] (https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets/wiki/Simple-%22Hello-World%22-extension) for a code sample. See How to write extensions for more documentation of extensibility APIs.

  • Enable [Unit Tests] (https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets/wiki/Extension-Experiments#wiki-unittests) in extensions (Randy, Jason, Peter):

    • We're now able to run unit tests in extensions
    • We implemented Unit Tests in the JS Quick Edit extension
    • We also added an API call to fix https://github.com/brackets-cont/brackets/issues/831 FileUtils.getNativeModuleDirectoryPath(). Take a look at src/extensions/disabled/JavaScriptInlineEditor/unittests.js for an example.
    • We search all extensions in "default" and "user" folders for unittest.js file, which is optional
    • We made some changes to ExtensionLoader module for loading timing.

  • Where Can Extensions Add UI?
    The main area where there is still discussion are the guidelines for the application menus, having a large list of every sub menu available makes finding contextually relevant functionality tricky. On the other hand, hiding and showing menu items depending on filetype hides extensions (and can be jarring if it changes from file to file).

    • Draft presentation on overall guidelines
    • Draft of extension menu guidelines
    • Discussion on Brackets-Dev

Major external contributions

• ryanstewart made improvements to the performance of sidebar resizing
• cantrell added Increase/Decrease Font Size (Cmd-=/-)
• jrowny upgraded LESS to 1.3.0 and investigated migrating to Bootstrap 2
• idflood enabled syntax coloring for a bunch of different file types
• cantrell remember sidebar view width
• bugfixes from timkim and amritayan

Bugs fixed in Sprint 9

See closed sprint 9 bugs. A few other bugs might have been fixed that weren't tagged.

Known issues in Sprint 9

• Sometimes CEF's browser cache gets corrupted. If you're getting crashes or find that it's not remembering the last folder you opened in the sidebar, you can delete the cache folder at ~/Library/Application Support/com.adobe.Brackets.cefCache (Mac) or ...<username>\AppData\Roaming\Brackets\cefCache (Win).
• Pasting text multiple times adds an extra blank line each time after the first.
• The Brackets native shell sometimes crashes while running unit tests.
• The scroll position isn't kept for files that aren't in the working set, so if you browse around in the file tree, you'll always start at the top of the file.
• Open and Quick Open don't add files to the working set automatically.
• Resizing the window feels sluggish.
• Autoindent on return may not always do what you want, especially for multi-line argument lists in JS function calls.
• Touchpad throw scrolling appears jittery due to issues with the mousewheel events generated by WebKit (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81040).

Upcoming features

Here are some things we're planning to do over the next few sprints:

• Commit Scrolling CodeMirror Enhancements
• Increase / Decrease Code Font Size
• Editor HTML Context Menus and Submenues
• Specify css stylesheets
• Continue performance research and enhancements