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Stack OverflowGood JavaScript IDE with jQuery support
[+436] [25] Pop Catalin
[2008-10-16 15:44:19]
[ javascript jquery ide editor ]
[ http://stackoverflow.com/questions/209126/good-javascript-ide-with-jquery-support ] [DELETED]

I'm planning to start learning jQuery (among other things), so I'm looking for a good Javascript editor that can preferably provide some of the following features:

Is there such an editor out here? Or anything that comes close to this?

(1) Previous threads with good answer, you have a lot of options: stackoverflow.com/questions/203991/… stackoverflow.com/questions/187818/any-ides-for-javascript-html stackoverflow.com/questions/41880/javascript-ides - Gene T
(1) Cheers! Good question. - Brian
(14) WebStorm from www.jetbrains.com is excellent for JavaScript, because it supports ECMAScript 5, understands JsDoc perfectly (inheritance and all). It's the only IDE that actually does that. jQuery is not a problem for it, it has offline documentation support and lots of things you can't even dream of. - Tower
(1) i use netbeans for java,j2ee development. I also use it for jquery. It provides syntax coloring , code completion etc. Just follow netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/js-toolkits-jquery.html - Abi
>>> this is a very nice tool as well for beautifying JavaScript and HTML: jsbeautifier.org - MacGyver
(6) Why is this not constructive? - Alan
Have you cons[ide]r[ed] ed? - Luka Ramishvili
(1) If I could, I'd vote to re-open this question. - Anderson Green
[+177] [2008-10-16 15:48:01] Paul M [ACCEPTED]

Take a look at Aptana [1] you can install it as a standalone IDE or plug it into eclipse if you are using or thinking about using that.

It seems to have all what your looking for, and has plugins for the debugging and more.

It also has an adobe air plugin which I love and am playing with at the moment. It allows you to create JS based air apps quite quickly.

It has support for all the main JS libraries built in and is a nice tool. Its worth taking a look.

Failing that take a look at eclipse it has a host of plugins (including aptana)

[1] http://www.aptana.com

(1) A very good suggestion, thank you! - Pop Catalin
(34) Dont forget if you are going to use Aptana to write jQuery to enable the jQuery Code Assist (Aptana: Window->Preferences->Aptana->Editors->JavaScript->Code Assist-><Check jQuery> - Brian
(10) Aptana 2.0 sucks big time (it's full of bugs and has dropped a lot of good features). I've used the 1.5 version with joy, but since the upgrade I'm looking for a replacement. - Alex Ciminian
(22) Aptana stopped fully supporting their own IDE about half a year after it became available. From what I can tell they have like two developers on staff. I paid for the Pro edition just to see x64 support so I could start using the thing, and then when they fixed it they dropped the commercial Pro version and rolled it all into the free version. I cannot express how disgusted I am with these guys. - stimpy77
(10) it's very slow to load - Jitendra Vyas
Aptana is great. I use Aptana for developing iPhone app with Appcelerator Titanium. - anticafe
(5) I used Aptana when it first came out for a solid year or so. It was slow, but worked pretty good. Things have not improved. It's still SUPER slow and loads of other issues. It's not really improved or supported anymore, you can clearly tell there is no passionate developers behind the product anymore. I highly suggest people look elsewhere. - Sembiance
I moved to Komodo Edit 7 from Aptana and haven't looked back - Jason
I'm using Aptana 3.0 across my Mac and my PC. Definitely dig it. - Alan
I was looking for a good IDE to replace netbeans as I was not 100% happy with it. I tried Komodo (21 days free trial) but it took me only like 3 hours to uninstall that piece of crap from my mac! Can't even believe they try to sell it for USD 380! Back to netbeans. - MrUpsidown
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[+89] [2010-06-09 02:40:01] trafalmadorian

Jetbrains (makers of the IntelliJ Java IDE) have a new IDE for HTML/CSS/Javascript editing called Webstorm [1]. It has support for multiple libraries, including jQuery. Has all the features [2] you want, and then some more like refactoring and SCM integration. Commercial software with 45-day trial, but Personal license is only $39 until 1 Sept 2010.

[1] http://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/
[2] http://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/features/index.html

(1) I'm using intellij idea (same thing but with support for more languages) and I highly recommend it for PHP or Java development. It's not free but it's worth its money. Really great integration of all technologies: javascript, css, html, php, etc. and really smart optimizations in your workflow of coding. - AlfaTeK
(2) +1 for this, within 5 minutes of downloading this does exactly what I want. Understands full OOP JS. - Duncan
(7) It's better than aptana. Because it comes from Jetbrains( big company = more support = more updates = will never stop to developing new versions etc. ) - LostInLib
I use PyCharm from jetbrains. It has the functionality of webstorm but is great for Python, GAE, DJANGO. - robert king
(5) I highly recommend Webstorm, it has all the feature You need, starting with the best autocompletion i have ever seen, code refactoring, syntax highlighting, easy importing without the need to create a project file, on the run integration of VCS, support for Coffescript and NodeJs, plus a cool plugin manager. - esimov
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[+47] [2009-09-11 08:55:22] user69260

have a look at ixedit, You will love it. http://www.ixedit.com/ It is the best for jquery


(1) WOW!!! Thanks for posting that link, I'm giving it a spin now. - Pop Catalin
(7) totally AMAZING!!! - Jay Stevens
(1) Good Lord how great is that!! :D - Dal
(1) Just trying this out. Is it any good in the long term ? Looks quite novel and useful ... ? - NimChimpsky
fantastic tool, thanks - anvd
Really very nice one. Thanks... - vissu
(2) I done everything described in ixedit.com/userguide/#startusingixedit (Placing and loading the required files) but couldn't yet boot ixedit... Is it enough to include that code in html page (in head element) and at next load of page, ixedit would appear??? - Nemanja Vujacic
@NemanjaVujacic Looks like ixedit's 'Getting started' page hasn't been updated for a while. Ixedit depends on Google Gears which is not maintained by Google anymore (and I haven't found a valid download link on the old Gears page). Google Gears is also not part of Chrome anymore, so (despite what ixedit authors say on the Getting Started page) it's not enough to just launch your site with included ixedit files in Chrome. I guess you could try getting some old version of Chrome (or old version of Google Gears for some other browser) - machinery
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[+45] [2010-11-10 19:57:43] Chris S.

(This is a cross-question post)

Netbeans

I've tried out all of the editors mentioned and my vote goes for Netbeans, which has already been mentioned. However the answer didn't really sell you on the features which you can find here [1].

It has:

  • Intellisense including jQuery built in
  • Extended (Eclipse-style) documentation for functions
  • Function and field outlining
  • Function and code folding/collapsing
  • Refactoring

It makes Visual Studio 2010's Javascript support look very primitive.

Netbeans

It also has very good (again, far better than VS2010) HTML and CSS support:

Netbeans html

[1] http://wiki.netbeans.org/JavaScript

(15) Visual Studio 2010's Javascript support is very primitive. :) - bzlm
(1) I am using both JQuery/JS in it but I want some thing better than this, should I install some of its plugin? - Hafiz
I have also tried lots of the IDE's and Netbeans is the best, not only for JS but as well as PHP and many others. - Damian
Tried Aptana Studio 2 and 3. It was kind of slow, and had confusing and sometimes wrong code completion. Then I tried out Visual Studio and it was terrible. Then had a look on IDEA Community Edition. Still wasn't good enough (I guess commercial version would be better). Moreover, IDEA's interface isn't really user friendly - too much features and menus (reminded me KDE..)! Then I tried NetBeans and was really surprised! Clean interface, code completion and lots of good features. Also has JSLint plugin, which came handy because I am just a beginner in JavaScript world. - ashagi
However, NetBeans has a flow (or maybe I haven't googled enough) - no project templates for JavaScript + CSS + HTML projects. So I ended up using PHP project setup. - ashagi
There's a trade off between a project template and intellisense...which do you use most of the time? A project template once every week perhaps, the rest of the time is spent using intellisense/google to find out about the API you're using whether it's HTML/CSS/JQuery/C# - Chris S.
Visual Studio 2010 doesn't support Javascript :) - Luka Ramishvili
On a more subjective note, it doesn't support anything ;) - Luka Ramishvili
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[+33] [2008-10-16 17:37:43] Herb Caudill

Visual Studio 2008 has Javascript intellisense, code coloring, automatic formatting, and debugging - right now (you don't need to wait for the next version when Microsoft officially starts supporting jQuery). I'm assuming the free Visual Web Developer 2008 [1] supports all this as well.

To enable jQuery intellisense (the MS term for code completion), just follow the instructions here: jQuery IntelliSense in Visual Studio 2008 [2].

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
[2] http://blogs.ipona.com/james/archive/2008/02/15/JQuery-IntelliSense-in-Visual-Studio-2008.aspx

(16) meh, it is far from outstanding, even in 2010 beta 2. Try getting intellisense inside (function($){/*here*/})(jQuery) block some day. Or inside callback. Maybe if your code is always in global scope.. - Alexander Abramov
(11) I agree with Alexander. I'm on this page specifically because jQuery support is so poor within VS2008 - Jess
(1) Just a side note, Visual Studio also has intellisense support for mootools code.google.com/p/mootoolsintellisense - Jay Zeng
(2) In RC there have been some drastic improvements and a few subtle features regarding context/scope that are pretty amazing. - Sky Sanders
(3) To add intellisense for jQuery just put /// <reference path="jquery-1.4.1-vsdoc.js" /> at the top of your script file (assuming jquery-1.4.1-vsdoc.js is in the same folder) - Chris S.
In cost/quality ratio terms, I can't think of a worse JS IDE than visual studio! - UpTheCreek
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[+23] [2011-08-30 03:53:09] victmo

I recently discovered Sublime Text 2. http://www.sublimetext.com/

It's super fast, slick, very customatizable and run on OSX, Windows and Linux.

It is also compatible with TextMate bundles and templates, so you can download one of many jQuery bundles on the net, for example https://github.com/kswedberg/jquery-tmbundle

I was a fan of e-Texteditor, but once I used this awesome piece of software, I've never open e again.

It's still in beta but definitely worth a try!


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[+17] [2011-03-11 12:59:55] dimitrisp

Cloud9 IDE

There is also Cloud9 IDE [1], an on-line, development-as-a-service environment for dynamic languages. Among other things it offers:

  • Realtime code validation for Javascript.
  • Run and Debug your Javascript Application
  • Social and collaboration features
[1] http://cloud9ide.com/

(1) This is the biggest piece of s**t IDE Ive seen. Spent the last 10 minutes trying to create a file and edit it, it does nothing. Great UI, if only it worked. - Dal
Yeah. The idea is promising. But it was hopelessly broken the last time I gave it a try. I wish they would at least give us a list of platforms and browsers that have been tested to work. - Steven Lu
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[+14] [2010-01-20 05:56:48] Aravindan R

You can also try Jetbrains WebIDE. http://www.jetbrains.com/webide/index.html . Its free while in beta. IMHO its far better than eclipse based IDEs like Aptana.


(6) I believe this has now been renamed WebStorm - Daniel Honig
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[+13] [2008-10-17 04:21:30] Senmiao Liu

KomodoEdit would be a good choice.It has built-in code assist for Jquery. You can also install Jquery Library Extension, if you want to use Jquery in Komodo extensions/macros.

KomodoEdit: http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/komodo_edit.mhtml

Jquery Library Extension: http://community.activestate.com/xpi/jquery


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[+6] [2009-04-04 19:20:39] user87144

I use SPKET (http://spket.com/). You can get it both as a standalone IDE or as an eclipse plugin.


(3) I've been using Splinetech javascript debugger for years, highly recommended for complex JQuery debugging for IE: javascript-debugger.com - Art Aroustamoff
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[+3] [2008-10-16 15:48:17] Joe Lencioni

I'm not sure if it fulfills all of your desires, but I believe there is a jQuery bundle [1] for TextMate [2].

[1] http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Bundles/JavaScript%20jQuery.tmbundle/
[2] http://macromates.com/

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[+2] [2008-10-16 17:27:11] Ionut Staicu

I'm not sure if it fulfills all of your desires, but I believe there is a jQuery bundle for TextMate.

That bundle also works fine with e-texteditor [1] (which is a clone of textmate - better than original!).

And to answer to you question: I use E-texteditor with custom bundles. That's because you will never use all jquery function, so you better you use online manual (lot of examples)

[1] http://www.e-texteditor.com/

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[+2] [2008-10-16 17:29:53] Kon

Since Microsoft announced that jQuery will be bundled with future Visual Studio versions, I'd expect some sort of IDE-level support. So if you're strictly a VS developer and don't mind waiting, wait for Visual Studio 20x.


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[+2] [2008-10-16 17:50:30] Kelly Bell

SCiTE (Scintilla Text Editor) has pretty good support, though I'm not sure if it has the libraries. However, as a coding tool it's really lightweight and awesome - I use it fulltime on the PC side, and TextMate and XCode on the Mac side.

http://www.scintilla.org/

http://scintilla.sourceforge.net/ScintillaDownload.html


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[+1] [2008-10-16 16:20:05] Voidstate

The new version of Zend Studio (6.1) has improved javascript support. If you also program PHP it might be of interest, otherwise I wouldn't bother.


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[+1] [2010-02-19 11:08:27] Greg

PhpEd is probably the best for PHP. Komodo is probably with the widest support. Aptana requires JAVA virtual machine, which I hate, but if you don't care you may find it very good, especially that it's free. Of course, Eclipse is a good choice, same "problem", if you go with free and you have to chose between Aptana and Eclipse, Eclipse is better and you can get the first as plugin for the second.

Anyway, I think the answer comes to a matter of getting used with sometihng. All have their pluses and minues, working with one of them is the only way you will find them.

JQuery you said... than I think Eclipse. Also a nice IDE, nice for beginners, comes from codelobster. The thing I like is that it has a plugin for Wordpress (in fact for several other applications, including what you've asked: JQuery), but these are paid.


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[+1] [2010-09-13 12:26:16] tschundeee

I can only recommend netbeans. It comes out of the box with all you need to be up and running instantly. It also has a full jQuery-Support with syntax highlighting, syntax checking, code completion including documentation and examples.

This resource should also be interesting for you: http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/js-toolkits-jquery.html


I totally agree with this answer. - Sayem Ahmed
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[+1] [2011-04-20 03:22:33] Oleg

A few I would recommend you try below. I use all of these for editing JavaScript in different circumstances.

Geany [1] is a lightweight desktop editor, great for working offline.

Akshell [2] is browser based IDE and platform, great for when you need to generate something on the server or plug into an API; in the same vein as Cloud9.

There's also jsFiddle.net, which is a browser based editor for editing front end code, shows you live preview of your results.

Disclosure: I'm helping out Akshell

[1] http://www.geany.org
[2] http://www.akshell.com

+1 for Geany. Good editor if I didn't have Emacs. - JasonFruit
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[+1] [2011-05-08 01:09:01] sojin

Take a look at VJET [1] from Ebay developers which is available under Eclipse marketplace as a plugin [2]. So you can converge all most all web development IDE needs to Eclipse.

[1] http://developer.ebay.com/products/vjet/
[2] http://marketplace.eclipse.org/node/46875

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[+1] [2011-08-12 19:47:41] Matt F.

For those of you on a mac, you have a couple of great choices :

  1. XCode
  2. Netbeans, although I tend to prefer it's Windows counterpart
  3. TextMate
  4. Coda ... Which is by far my IDE of choice for Web-related development
  5. Espresso, which is also a really good web-oriented IDE

Web aside, Netbeans is my favourite IDE. Nowhere else can you get an IDE that polished for free... Some people say Eclipse is the only way to go, but in all honesty I never liked Eclipse.

I like 4 and 5 most because they really are web-oriented IDEs, so you get a ton of useful features out of the box. The big counterpart is that they aren't free... But IMHO Coda is worth every dollar.

You can get jQuery support in Coda via this plugin : jQuery Syntax Mode plugin [1]

[1] http://digitalsandbox.net/index.php/project/category/jquery_syntax_mode

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[0] [2010-06-14 03:40:06] Elaine

how about this? http://wiki.netbeans.org/JavaScript#New_File_Templates


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[0] [2010-07-22 07:45:46] Sandeep

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate is the best IDE for jQuery....


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[0] [2010-09-08 23:04:51] omt66

ixedit looks very interesting http://www.ixedit.com/


Thanks, but it's already posted stackoverflow.com/questions/209126/… - Pop Catalin
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[0] [2010-11-16 10:44:26] Bob_from_Macedonia

There is a great IDE for ExtJs javasript framework called Ext Designer. Look at this link [1] what is it capable for. Ineed just like this IDE but for jquery. Anyone knows about it?

[1] http://www.sencha.com/products/designer/

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[0] [2011-04-13 11:17:44] Neil

I agree that Cloud 9 [1] is a very nice IDE. It connects to your GitHub account and is cloud based so all you need it a device with a browser to use it. Here is a nice write up on NetTuts+: Why Cloud9 Deserves your Attention [2]

[1] http://cloud9ide.com/
[2] http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/why-cloud9-deserves-your-attention/

+1 for Cloud9 - brilliant and can be self-hosted as well as on-line. - Alistair77
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