Akshell: An Impressive New Cappuccino Based JavaScript IDE
March 21st 2011
Akshell is a new online IDE for building server-side web apps in JavaScript, including instant deployment to their cloud servers. It has actually been around for a little while now, but it recently relaunched with a completely redesigned used interface built using the Cappuccino framework, which provides a very rich and desktop-like experience for the app. It also makes use of the Ace (formally Bespin) code editor, which provides a great code editing experience including syntax highlighting, JavaScript syntax error checking and more.
Just so you can see the difference, here is what Akshell looked like before it switched to using Cappuccino. Amazing!
Akshell stores all of your code and resources in the cloud, and includes instant deployment of your app on their servers much like Heroku, Nodester, No.de and other such services. You can run your app at a subdomain, such as myapp.akshell.com, or at a custom domain name. Akshell also includes a JavaScript eval console so you can run code in your app’s environment directly, as well as a built in Git console.
Akshell apps are built using the Akshell JavaScript framework, which includes a database ORM layer to talk to the built in PostgreSQL database. It is not currently built using Node.js, so I’m not sure what JS engine it is running - hopefully something fast! The API does however, conform to the JSGI specification. Check out the Getting Started guide to see more about how to see more about the Akshell framework.
Akshell is very interesting. It is a true end to end solution for building web applications using JavaScript, from IDE and framework, to database and deployment. I especially like how rich and desktop-like the user interface is - it is certainly the most beautiful online code editor currently available! It’s interesting to see more and more of these online IDEs appear. I think Bespin really kicked off a movement! Now we have Cloud9, Akshell and others competing in this space. It’ll be interesting to see more web-based development tools emerge!
I recommend you check out the documentation, or just head to the IDE itself to check it out - no registration required! Let me know how you like Akshell in the comments!