Aptana: an IDE for JS/AJAX developers

Posted by Phil on June 12, 2008 under Javascript, Web Development | Read the First Comment

One of the things that I really like when I develop is a good IDE.  Now I don’t usually use all the extra bells and whistles but I like auto-complete, error checking, and a solid testing engine/server.

When I first jumped on the java train, I used a community version of SunOne Studio.  It was nice, it only crashed when you didn’t want it too, and was the right price (for educational purposes).  Later  when I took more java classes I used JBuilder, for a about a week.  I’m not saying JBuilder is bad, it’s just not as free as Eclipse (my current favorite IDE for all my java needs).

Anyway to shorten the story, I use eclipse (or a variant like EasyEclipse) for my java and php development, but I had not found an IDE that supported prototype and jQuery (and by support I mean the previously mentioned features, you know, auto-complete, error checking, etc).  That all changed when I somehow stumbled onto aptana studio.

Aptana is a fantastic IDE that is based on Eclipse, but features a built-in rendering engine/server, support for all the popular javascript libs (prototype, jQuery, mooTools, mochikit, Dojo…) and is brimming with scripts, snippets, and helper libraries.  They have even developed an interesting technology called “jaxer” (which stands for ajax-server).  I haven’t played with Jaxer yet, but it sounds like it can do some fascinating things.  There are also plug-ins for iPhone development, AIR support, and PHP development.

What I mostly use Aptana for is testing new web 2.0 pages.  For example, on one of our sites we redesigned the press release page.  Development on that site is done in WebSphere 5.6.1, which means I have to dig out a VM and do my work in there… which is lag-tastic (especially the test server).  With Aptana, I can test everything cleanly up front and see what I’m going to get (with a quick page mock-up) before I attempt to code the whole thing in the VM.  If you’re bored, give it a try, it’s a fairly hefty download, but it’s worth playing with it.

Aptana comes in two flavors, Community and Pro.  There is a comparison chart on the aptana studio download page.