In response to enterprise develop requirements for mobile development Active State is releasing a major update to its cross-platform Komodo IDE, and its free open-source counterpart Komodo EDIT, with improved support for JavaScript and JavaScript frameworks.

Originally introduced in 2000, Komodo IDE is a multi­-language IDE for Python, PHP, JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS, Node.js, Golang, Ruby, Perl, and a variety of other languages and frameworks. Features include syntax checking, smart code and API assistance, code refactoring and code formatting, visual real time debugging, code profiling, regular expression helper, track changes, unit testing, version control system integration. Many of its features are in the free, open-source Komodo EDIT. 

For the new version of Komodo IDE/EDIT the entire user interface has been given a big facelift to make Komodo more maintainable and less prone to interface related bugs. In addition you can now define your own colors. Every color scheme now also extends to the user interface, so you can tweak and style not just how your code looks, but also how Komodo looks. For those who prefer not to have their user interface change too much there are preferences which let you use the “classic” UI in many places. These changes do mean that skins and iconsets for Komodo 8 and 9 will no longer work.

A new UI element in Komodo 10 is a dynamic toolbar which holds buttons that provide contextual actions to your files and project. They show and hide based on what you’re doing and provide information and actions based on how your files and projects are configured. For example the version control dynamic button will show you how many files have changed and allow you to quickly open, eg. file or project history, or the commit dialog. The dynamic toolbar allows you to create your own buttons or download ones contributed by other developers.

When you first start Komodo (or when you update between major versions) Komodo will now show you a First Start Wizard that lets you customize Komodo to your preferences. Tabs or spaces? You make the choices.

The main emphasis in Komodo IDE 10 is giving mobile and web developers more facilities. Active State's Director of Engineering, Tom Radcliffe, explains:

"Our society's reliance on mobile devices has led to the proliferation of mobile apps ­­both enterprise and personal. As a result, it has become increasingly important for enterprises to provide their developers with the tools to create not just programs, but mobile apps to help run their businesses and processes. By having tighter integration with mobile build systems such as Cordova and PhoneGap, and build systems for the web, Grunt and Gulp, developers can now run specific tasks with the click of a button instead of switching between an IDE and running something in their terminal."

Another major addition to the full IDE is a new Chrome remote debugging functionality, and improved user experience for version control and unit testing. Nathan Rijksen, Lead Developer of Komodo says:

"With this release we really wanted to give mobile and web developers a seamless experience so they don't have to deal with the hassle of going back and forth between two (or more) different systems when working on a project. Developers just want to code without distractions, and Komodo 10 reduces these distractions."

Both the IDE and EDIT versions of Komodo benefit from support for the JavaScript frameworks  React, Ember, Angular and support for TypeScript and ES6.

A free 21-day trial of Komodo IDE 10 is available from as is the free open-source Komodo 10 EDIT from http://komodoide.com/

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