News

New JavaScript Editor

• By Linda L. Briggs
• April 4, 2005

Leading Web design and development tools such as Macromedia Dreamweaver can make Web site development much faster and easier but often leave lots to be desired when developers want to actually write new code.

To address that, an Australian company called C Point has released Antechinus JavaScript Editor 5.0, a Windows application that helps with tasks including adding client-side scripting, menus, and multimedia capabilities to Web sites. JavaScript Editor also has a built-in Visual Web Designer that allows point-and-click modifications to Web pages.

For easy testing of new features, the new release lets users display a Web page and arbitrarily call any JavaScript function available to it, then type in the parameters and observe the output. The product makes tasks such as adding e-commerce functions and interactivity to a Web site easier. It can speed design work with its ability to check syntax. It can also run a selected piece of code directly from JavaScript Editor, without the need for a Web page.

JavaScript Editor is also geared to JavaScript novices, with a step-by-step hands-on tutorial that illustrates all standard JavaScript objects, methods and properties with examples you can copy, paste and run instantly.

Craig Cleaveland, a software consultant based in New Hampshire, uses JavaScript Editor to create Internet applications such as a financial modeling application he’s written, which is made up of numerous JavaScript, .JSP and Java files. With 30-plus years of programming and design, Cleaveland says he finds the product especially valuable for “someone who wants a simple, easy-to-use text editor that understands JavaScript. I don't like using overly sophisticated tools that do things without your knowledge.”

C Point makes a number of products for programming and scripting, Web development, and animation and imaging. JavaScript Editor 5.0 costs $49.95 and can be purchased from C Point's Web site at www.c-point.com.