We’d like to thank all of the Alpha testers for trying out, and submitting feedback for the WebIDE.  The feedback has helped us fix bugs, and tweak the editor to work for more people.

We’re working on a new installer that should improve things quite a bit.  Some of the new features:

1. Installs in 3-4 minutes vs 10-15 minutes.
2. Reduce memory consumption by half.  We switched from a node process to monitor the status of the server to a simple debian process monitor (restartd).
3. Larger initial download, smaller overall download.  The majority of the dependencies are now included, so the initial download is larger, but should make for a smaller overall download.
4. New ‘webide’ user.  We’ve created a new user and group so that the IDE can be installed by more people, in more configurations.

We’re hoping to get the new installer out in a week or two.  Some of the things we’re trying to finish up are adding GPIO access to the new user without dropping into root access.  In Raspbian Wheezy and Occidentalis, the ‘pi’ user has sudo access without using a password, and we’d like to avoid that, but there doesn’t seem to be a great solution to this that I’ve found thus far.  Please offer suggestions, if you know of a way to do this.  It looks like karl101 made some good progress, but still has some open questions.

Also, feel free to offer feedback for any features you’d like, or any suggestions you have to make the editor easier and faster to use.  You can add feedback to our github issues page.  We have already got a nice constant stream of good feedback that has helped us improve the WebIDE, so keep up the good work.

Learn how to install the WebIDE on your Raspberry Pi here.

The Adafruit Learning Technologies team develops tools and resources to help people learn.  In an effort to be as open as possible and to keep our awesome community involved, we decided to do a periodical Developer Journal.  In our Developer Journal posts, we will share with you the current Adafruit Learning Technologies projects in development, upcoming new features, and the status of existing projects.  Check out our current projects, the Adafruit Learning System, and the WebIDE.