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Online IDEs remove a large part of the hassle of having to set up a plethora of tools even before any coding can begin, they can be accessed from any computer, can be easily shared and make it easier for everyone contributing to have the same setup. Online IDEs allow building, testing and previewing projects in the cloud.
The obvious drawback to online IDEs is Internet dependency. They can quickly become unreliable if there's any chance of Internet outages. And while whole environments can be spun up to test and preview projects, a cloud IDE is not a host. Projects can't be stored in the cloud and sharing has limits.
Pro On-demand, instant-access, real-time collaborative IDEs
Codenvy "Factory" feature enables developers to create temporary IDE workspaces with full code, build, test, deploy, and collaboration functionality that can be shared with a URL. Multiple people can work in the same workspace making code reviews and teaching simpler and faster. And ther...
Pro Easy setup
Once an account is set up and the user has logged in, all that's needed to start is to pick a language, a framework and a PaaS. Codenvy also allows anonymous logins albeit with some important limitations.
Pro Powerful editor
Codenvy has a fast, secure browser-based editor that supports syntax highlighting, code completion, refactoring and more. It can be used to edit, build, run and debug projects. It even has multi-cursor support. The layout will be familiar to most developer, especially those experienced with Eclip...
Con No SSH, FTP mode
For example, "Code everywhere" allows using SSH, FTP as base of project. In Codenvy it's possible only through VM.
Con No custom keyboard shortcuts
No possibility to create custom keyboard shortcuts.
Pro Has mobile apps for all major mobile OSs
Codeanywhere has apps for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire, Windows and Blackberry.
Pro Dropbox and Google Drive support
Codeanywhere allows connecting to a Dropbox or a Google Drive account and pull development files from there making it easy to sync development files across devices.
Con Web editor on iPad is severely lacking
Codeanywhere relies on right click for major actions but doesn't support this interaction on iPad. Selecting listed Dev box URLs to access site is also unworkable in practice. iPad app allows the actions but has very limited set of Dev box controls. Using an external keyboard with the app can...
Pro Terminal with root access
Cloud9 gives full terminal access to home directory. In their hosted Linux Ubuntu environment it has sudo powers. No UNIX commands have been blocked - npm, ifconfig, chmod, chown, tar, etc work. All commands can be accessed and any package can be installed. However, certain advanced features are...
Pro SSH Workspace
Allows you to connect directly to your external server via SSH. Modifying files directly on your server using a cloud based editor allows you to have the portability of the a cloud based workspace with the control of your own server (including complete DNS control).
Con You need a credit card to sign up
You need a credit card to sign up for Cloud9, which is problematic for users in countries where credit cards are not the norm. They won't bill you (for the free account), but still require it. You can buy a VISA gift card and sign up with that.
Con Expensive
For more than one private workspace, the starting price is $19/month.
Pro Everything is supported
All languages, databases, and command-line tools are supported. Most machines are already set up with web project basics like Apache, PHP, MySQL, Ruby, Node.js, Perl, and Python and anything else can be installed via the SSH root access.
Pro Ability to signup with Github
And link account to oDesk and Facebook.
Con No real individual user support
While they do have plans available for 1-10 users, they are not focused on individual developers, so much as teams.
Pro Simple and efficient interface
SourceLair features a very efficient interface, containing only the tools needed, thus providing focus on what's important - code.
Pro Django stack, out of the box
SourceLair provides a minimal Django stack which can be used to host projects and see development results right away. Plus, there's a public link that can be used to share with colleagues or team.
Con Expensive
SourceLair offers a free plan that allows you one private project. However if you want more projects, the Pro plan is fairly expensive at $8/month ($96/year).
Pro CoffeeScript and SCSS support
In addition to supporting JavaScript and CSS, language settings can be switched to CoffeeScript and SCSS.
Pro Allows collaborating on code
JSFiddle makes it easy to save the code snippets and send the link to others who can view and edit the code.
Con Not actually an IDE
JSFiddle is not actually an IDE and is only suitable for small blocks of code.
Pro Syntax checking
Highlights syntax errors and automatically fix some errors
Pro Supports multiple file access points
Access files from FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon S3
Pro Tiny but very powerful
Zipped install is around 0.5MB, but it's a very powerful editor that covers a lot
Pro Host it youself
A solution you can download, install in your server and be coding online with 60 seconds.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Open source / self hostable
You can run it on your server to allow your team to edit files using just a browser. Simplest may be using one of the Docker images.
Pro Custom commands
You can package up custom commands with the workspace and then use them (or share them) with everyone else.
Con Currently no search and replace in multiple files
There is a search in multiple files, and search & replace in current file, but not something to perform a search & replace in multiple files. However using the terminal to perform such operations is possible (if you know how to do that).
Con Single-user, no authentication
Eclipse Che is single user without even any authentication (it's recommended to run it behind Nginx to add authentication). One can run an instance for each user, or switch to Codenvy (which is a multi-tenant, multi-user, elastic implementation of Che). Currently it is unsafe to deploy it on a...
Pro Has been upgraded to a Code Sharing community : Glitch.com
The page link now redirects to Glitch.com which improves massively on their previous product, and is a somewhat geekier version of Codepen.com
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Fully functional terminal
Codio gives you full access to a terminal, with all the ubuntu commands. You can use the terminal within the page, or you can access by SSH from your computer.
Pro Emmet
Emmet support for a whole range of features that really boost productivity when working with HTML and CSS. These features include expanding abbreviations into full HTML or CSS as well as some very powerful keyboard shortcuts.
Con Private projects aren't free
The pricing plan looks too restrictive comparing to other Coding Cloud solutions.
Con This is not a "cloud IDE," this is a remotely accessible virtual machine.
This topic is about the best cloud IDEs and having a Google VM Instance on the list is a bit of a stretch. That's not to say that the service isn't valuable or great, but it is a completely separate purpose. Granted, you can certainly install the necessary tools on your virtual machine to...
Pro Code complete
Best code completion for php, javascript and css.
Pro Beautiful, user friendly website
The website has a beautiful design and is very easy to nagivate and find what you're looking for.
Con Young project
CodeTasty is a fairly new IDE and still has some catching up to do in terms of community size and ironing out bugs.
Pro Simple Git commit/sync UI
Using the UI to commit and push and pull Git commits is simple on Codebox; simpler than most cloud IDE. Of course one can always use the Git CLI.
Pro Has some off-line editing support
Provides some off-line editing.
Con Single project
Each instance of Codebox is meant to be used for a single project.
Con Not maintained
Was sold to a company and has not been maintained since (April 2015). You can read more about it here.
Pro In-system programming development model
Working on a live system shortens development turn-around cycles and eliminates the need of complex CI steps during development.
Con Poor documentation
Other than the getting started guide on their Github page, their only documentation is in PDF.
Pro Supports Bootstrap
StackHive supports Bootstrap 2 & 3, and provides a tutorial on using Bootstrap with Stackhive.
Pro Free plan available
There is a free plan available for trying out the IDE. It allows you 3 projects and 2 pages per project.
Con Very similar to Webflow
Many developers and designers have called StackHive a poorly executed Webflow knock off. Though StackHive currently offers more features than Webflow, it has much less of a polished feel, and can be buggy and slow at times. You can see a side-by-side comparison of the UI here.
Pro Free learning resources
Visual Studios offers a series of short tutorials to help you get started with Monaco.
Pro Open source
Visual Studio Code, which includes Monaco, was recently (November 2015] open sourced.
Know any negative aspects of this option?
Pro Realtime collaboration
Collaborating with Neutron Docs works similar to Google Docs. You can invite a friend/coworker for pair program or assistance
Con Does not support Git
Neutron Drive only saves to Gdrive or a private file server, so there is no github integration.
Pro Inexpensive
Google Cloud Shell is free for Google Cloud Platform customers.
Pro Includes Eclipse Orion IDE already configured
Eclipse Orion can be difficult to setup/configure if creating a do-it-yourself VM running Eclipse. This makes it easier to have a working IDE.
Con Minimal UI
Cloud Shell's editor is not as featureful as some alternatives, and the shell and Eclipse UIs are not integrated unlike in many other editors that allow the shell and IDE to be combined in a single window.
Con Lack of flexibility
Some alternatives allow you to customize the CPU, RAM, and hard disk size of the IDE host environment. Cloud Shell gives you a 5GB durable home directory and does not allow these other parameters to be customized (though one can use Cloud Shell to provision a VM instance that is customized accordi...
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