WebStorm 8.0 (http://www.jetbrains.com/webstorm/) is already here - it was officially released on 26.03.2014. The latest version of the best IDE for web devs brings some neat improvements. I'm still learning these, but to be frank - I already love most of the things I've found so far :)

First things first:

  1. The feature I was especially waiting for - smooth Spy-JS integration. If you haven't heard about Spy-JS, check one of my archive posts or go straight to its website: http://spy-js.com/. The short version for the impatient, thanks to Spy-JS you can:
  • track the events that happen in observed application
  • for each recorded event, check the code that was executed (full stack)
  • for each recorded event, read the snapshotted variable values
  • track the execution time on every call level

I know it was possible to integrate Spy-JS with WebStorm before, but now it comes out-of-the-box and it works like charm. I did some test to find out how moustrap.js (keyboard / mouse utility lib) does deal with my events and debugging it was NEVER so smooth and trouble-less. If you do web dev, you most likely already know the bitter taste of event debugging in JavaScript - Spy-JS can truly help, well it does for me.

If you want to take a glimpse about how it works, here's a short tutorial video made by JetBrains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPIbwxzC5cU

  1. Noticeably better angular.js support. Not a massive deal, but with current angular.js plugin you get:
  • intellisense (aka code completion ;>) not just for angular.js API in your JS code, but also for your custom directives / scope elements in your view pages (this REALLY saves time and effort if you stick to sensible naming conventions)
  • aided (contextual) navigation for angular.js constructs -> if you're aware of how angular's dependency injection works, you realize how tricky (and painful) that was before. To be honest - I didn't use it long enough to say if it's really ergonomic enough, but it seems to be step in a very right direction
  • I've also seen it mentioned that it's possible to bring up the official documentation of angular.js in a very quick way, but I didn't try that yet.

If you want to have a look on WebStorm's angular.js support, here's your chance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWlj4a_e0G0

  1. And finally, something tiny, that majority may not appreciate that much, but I simply love it since the first sight -> grunt integration done right. Right now, you can just right-click your Gruntfile.js, pick "Grunt console" and then:
  • you have direct access to all the content of your Gruntfile.js, so you can check the tasks and execute them freely
  • you can a proper intellisense (yes, yes, code completion - I know...) for Gruntfile.js as well

It just works, nothing to configure (well, you have to get npm module, but that's the bread and butter), just enjoy. Here's the short tut: http://youtu.be/8KIir6EsFPE

  1. There are some more new feautures as well (improved require.js support, Live Console, CucumberJS support, Bower integration), but I didn't check those yet, so can't say much. If any of these points are particularily interesting for you, you can start digging here: http://youtu.be/8KIir6EsFPE

To summarize:

In my opinions the change do not rock the world up-side down, but I can't deny them being helpful, especially if you're angular.js developer. If you do a lot of web development, but you didn't use WebStorm so far, 8.0 may be a good opportunity to get a grip on this great IDE - once you try it, you won't like to get back to whatever you were using before.

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