Mozilla Thimble • Hacker News Board

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#11

Post by sequoia » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:24 PM UTC

To developers complaining that this is not an IDE they'd actually use: where did you get the idea that this tool is meant to be an IDE for professionals? This is clearly an educational tool, and I think it looks pretty good for that.

0. pick text editor 1. install text editor 2. find some sample html 3. open file in your browser 4. find some resources for learning HTML & CSS (yep, w3schools) 5. learn that validators exist 6. learn that linters exist etc. etc.

With mozilla thimble: 1. click to start new project 2. try stuff (instant feedback), learn about code validation (instant feedback), share your page etc. 3. level up to more robust environment.

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#12

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:28 PM UTC

It complains about perfectly valid HTML, e.g.:

  
    Item
    Item

Why doesn't it know about optional end tags? :(

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#13

Post by sequoia » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:29 PM UTC

AhtiK wrote: post #9

> Thimble makes it ridiculously simple to create your own web pages. Ridiculously simple way would be to edit straight inside the page. Why contentEditable-based in-place editing is still missing in so many blog and website engines? Navigating between html editor and preview feels a bit wrong and old when targeting regular users. I'm not saying that only Thimble is the "old and wrong". I've been wondering about the s…

The goal is not just to create web pages but to teach people about the technologies that drives the web (the tool many nonprogrammers use day in and day out). A straight wysiwyg wouldn't achieve that end.

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#14

Post by callahad » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

jashkenas wrote: post #4

Neat -- poking around in the console, it looks like Webmaker is using Backbone.js ... I was wondering if anyone from the Webmaker team could tell us what exactly it's using it for?

I haven't had a chance to dive into it, but the source is at https://github.com/mozilla/webpagemaker

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#15

Post by twog » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:38 PM UTC

Anyone else getting a 500 error? Looks like they are having some server issues at the moment

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#16

Post by kbanman » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:42 PM UTC

alexkam wrote: post #8

Looks like javascript is not allowed here. If so - what is the purpose of all this? Does anyone still make pages which have zero javascript? But the html editor is a really nice one :-)

Javascript is not an essential part of web development. This tool is geared towards web pages rather than applications, where client-side scripting might play a bigger role.

Unfortunately (and with some good reason) there are still many people who use NoScript et al to browse the web without javascript.

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#17

Post by jablan » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:51 PM UTC

vibrunazo wrote: post #5

This feels like they're a bit confused about which target audience and abstraction layer they're aiming to. This is like trying to get more kids to program by trying to show them how easy and fun assembly language is. Shouldn't your energy be better spent developing, promoting and educating the use of higher level tools? It's hard for me to think of an use case for this. What kind of people, exactly would this help?…

> This is like trying to get more kids to program by trying to show them how easy and fun assembly language is.

Doesn't this way make sense if you are a manufacturer of microcontrollers, for example?

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#18

Post by munchor » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 5:56 PM UTC

The first thing I noticed was that the font of the editor is not monospaced... too bad.

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#19

Post by vibrunazo » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 6:00 PM UTC

jablan wrote: post #17

vibrunazo wrote: post #5

This feels like they're a bit confused about which target audience and abstraction layer they're aiming to. This is like trying to get more kids to program by trying to show them how easy and fun assembly language is. Shouldn't your energy be better spent developing, promoting and educating the use of higher level tools? It's hard for me to think of an use case for this. What kind of people, exactly would this help?…

> This is like trying to get more kids to program by trying to show them how easy and fun assembly language is. Doesn't this way make sense if you are a manufacturer of microcontrollers, for example?

Of course, this is why I said it seems they're confused about their target. Their website and learning method seems designed for kids with zero technical knowledge. But the content material seems designed for manufacturers of microcontrollers. Who is this for? Something doesn't match.

Re: Mozilla Thimble

#20

Post by alexkam » Mon, Jun 18, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

kbanman wrote: post #16

alexkam wrote: post #8

Looks like javascript is not allowed here. If so - what is the purpose of all this? Does anyone still make pages which have zero javascript? But the html editor is a really nice one :-)

Javascript is not an essential part of web development. This tool is geared towards web pages rather than applications, where client-side scripting might play a bigger role. Unfortunately (and with some good reason) there are still many people who use NoScript et al to browse the web without javascript.

>> Javascript is not an essential part of web development.

This is a very strong statement and I probably disagree. I am not talking about client-side applications here, but all those Google Analytics snippets, Facebook Like buttons, Discus comments etc. The script block essentially became a standard way to include third party functionality into the web page. And without it this tool is less useful than it could be.