The latest version of Orion has been released with improvements including smarter defaults. Orion is a browser based open tool integration platform aimed at web developers, that is managed by the Eclipse Foundation, who also provide the OrionHub, a service that lets you experiment with Orion.

The developers say that Orion 14 is more accessible and easier to start coding in. The Node.js server that is used on orion.eclipse.org or locally) has received continued work, as has the Electron app.

Accessibility has been a focus for improvements in recent versions, and this release continues the process with better color contrast in the light theme so that all colors pass the WCAG 2.0 AA guideline for color contrast.

Automatic project configuration means the JavaScript tooling can now read and understand complex project configurations and automatically configure Tern. There's also new support from the platform to find project contexts, so that the JavaScript tools can now support a “project” at any level in the navigator.

The smarter defaults improvements mean in practical terms that the default configuration for the JavaScript tools has been retooled to be better 'out of the box;. Previous versions started the tools in a minimal configuration. The new release automatically starts with ECMA, node and browser support, and configures your project as you code.

Elsewhere in the IDE, you can disable linting in a particular file if you need to turn warnings off for just a specific project. JavaScript Type Icons have been added to help you immediately understand the type of something. For example, F stands for function, O is for objects, C is for classes, etc.

In terms of platform improvements, syntax styling grammars can now define a firstLineMatch attribute that enables multiple grammars to be defined for a content type, and the grammar that gets applied will be chosen based on the first line of content.

Automatic syntax checking has also been added, so that you are warned about potential problems while you are working. In previous releases, syntax checking took place when a file was saved, so that if you worked with autosave turned off, problem markers could become stale causing confusion.

Annotation is another area to have been improved, with a new 'info' annotation type, and the ability to show annotations only in certain parts of the IDE.

More Information

Orion Hub 

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