Recently Aptana added support for Adobe AIR (the platform formally known as Apollo) to their Open Source IDE. Why is this cool? Well Aptana is a standalone web/JavaScript development application that is built on top of Eclipse. Best of all, Aptana is free. This is a great alternative to locking yourself into Adobe's Dreamweaver or Flex builder plugins.
You can download Aptana here. Once you have it installed, open it up and look at the Aptana start page under Plugins. Here you will be able to walk through the process of downloading and installing the Adobe Air Runtime, SDK, and the Aptana Plugin.
Once everything is setup simply go to File > New > Project and select Adobe Air. Fill in the project name and description and then import your preferred Ajax Libraries to start coding with. There is a host to libraries to choose from including YUI, jQuery, and ProtoType.
The pre-created project includes all of the Javascript needed to start writing your application. The AIRAliases.js file maps all of the local OS and file system functions to JavaScript so that you can, within AIR, make calls directly to the users computer. I recommend trying out the sample text-file editor application from the Adobe's QuickStart page to get a sense of how easy it is to build AIR applications and what is possible using this new framework.
Once you have your code ready to test, just hit the green "Play" button and Aptana will compile your app and launch it within Adobe AIR
A year ago, developing a web application using Ruby on Rails (which recently turned two years old) on Windows was a bit of a pain due to the lack of a decent integrated development environment (IDE). Now we're practically swimming in them. Let's recap: There's RadRails, the popular cross-platform, Eclipsed-based editor, RoRED, one for Windows with a unique M/V/C tab grouping, Ruby in Steel, an add-on for Visual Studio 2005, and now RIDE-ME, a new Windows-only Rails IDE with an uncomfortable-sounding name. RIDE-ME bills itself as "geared primarily toward developers who are migrating from a Microsoft development platform," which puts it in competition with Ruby in Steel. Version 1.0 of RIDE-ME was just released, and when I tried it out I was impressed by its snappiness, but I did come across several fairly ugly bugs that seem more at home in a 0.9 or 1.0 beta. I won't be switching from RadRails just yet, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on RIDE-ME.
Aptana is a slick looking JavaScript IDE that rivals larger IDE's like Visual Studio. Aptana includes support for AJAX, and has an easy to use interface to help with your web design tasks. Included is an outline view, file and project tabs for quick browsing of your file system. There is a decent help system that helps you get setup in Aptana coding the way that works best for you. The splash or home screen does a good job of explaining many aspects of the system and how to use it right off the bat. My favorite feature is the integrated JavaScript reference to help you learn more as you code, or simply make looking up the name of a function or other syntax very easy.
I love Ruby on Rails, but I have to admit, the acronym "RoR" kind of annoys me. Anyway, I won't let that idiosyncrasy of mine be a strike against RoRED, a brand new integrated development environment (IDE) for Ruby on Rails. RoRED is Windows-only app that has most of the features you expect in a basic IDE, like syntax highlighting (for both Ruby and HTML/RHTML), tabbed documents, and a file management/navigation pane. It also has easy navigation between methods, bookmarks and "hyperbookmarks," and macros. In addition, it also has a few Rails-specific features, like automatic grouping of model, view, and controller tabs, and buttons for managing servers and consoles. RoRED is free and a pleasantly light download: just 790kb.
Ever heard of Ruby? Rails? Ruby on Rails? If you don't know, Ruby is a newer very efficient programming language and revolutionary way to code applications. Rails is a web framework that makes coding in Ruby easier by adding a lot to it's innate functionality and suave style. After becoming jealous of the Mac users out there who had a great text editor to use when coding Ruby (at least in the video tutorials), I decided to find a good one for Windows. Enter SciTe, which is a great text editor that comes pre-packaged with "InstantRails." InstantRails is somewhat like a LAMP installation for Windows, but with Ruby on Rails instead of Perl, Python, or PHP. SciTe is also available apart from InstantRails, and does a great job of editing CSS, HTML, and many other types of syntax as well. I am now using it for most of my "quick-drop-and-give-me-20" programming tasks, such as downloading and editing a CSS file by hand from a web server. That's right, I still make hardcore edits oldskool style (I thought everyone still did, my bad), and SciTe makes it easy. Integrated with my favorite ftp client (FileZilla, also free) it makes shotgun edits simple, and almost fun. SciTe is a free download.
Last week, to not very much fanfare, Google released Google Desktop Gadget Designer, a full-fledged Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Google Desktop sidebar widgets. Er, gadgets. Gadget Designer features a drag-and-drop interface design tool, integrated debugging, project management, and most of the other basic features you expect in and IDE. Google also released of Google Desktop 4 (final) and announced the first Google Desktop Gadget Contest, which is underway. The prize is $5,000 for the best gadget, $2,000 for second place, and $1,000 for third. Gadget geeks, start your IDEs.
I couldn't think of anything to add to the title of this post that wouldn't be redundant. EasyEclipse is what it sounds like: A prepackaged installer for the Eclipse IDE that makes getting up and running with Eclipse really simple on Windows, OS X, or Linux. It comes in a variety of flavors to match your programming language/environment of choice, including Java, LAMP, PHP, Python, and Ruby on Rails. Each distribution comes with preinstalled plugins to make your life easier, but the EasyEclipse web site also has a variety of other plugins that are packaged similarly for ease of installation. The project was inspired by the Eclipse download hell post on Simon Willison's Weblog which, a year and a half after its original posting, is still the third result for Google searches for "Eclipse download."
I can't imagine that many Ruby programmers have a copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 hanging around, so I'm thinking the target demographic for Steel is developers who are used to VS but want to get into Ruby programming without interrupting their workflow. Steel is a free language add-on for VS 2005 that aim "to leverage all the features of Visual Studio." Currently Steel does syntax coloring and running scripts with a keystroke. More complex features aren't yet included but development seems to be progressing rapidly so hopefully it won't be long before features like code completion and IntelliSense are implemented. Check the Steel blog for lots of screenshots and development updates, or head straight to the download page.
Adobe has released a beta version of Flex 2.0, its "complete
solution for building cross-platform Rich Internet Applications within the enterprise and across the web." What
the heck does that mean? Basically it's a development environment for creating Flash apps. While I'm rather skeptical
of the idea of creating enterprise apps that run in Flash Player (yes, that Flash Player), I admit that Flex does look pretty cool. The IDE is based
on open source gargantuan Eclipse and has built-in frameworks for rapid development. According to CNet, Adobe
plans to "un-bundle" Flex and offer its components for lower prices, including a basic kit that will be
available for free.
Recently Aptana added support for Adobe AIR (the platform formally known as Apollo) to their Open Source IDE. Why is this cool? Well Aptana is a standalone web/JavaScript development application that is built on top of Eclipse. Best of all, Aptana is free. This is a great alternative to locking yourself into Adobe's Dreamweaver or Flex builder plugins.
Adobe 
