The WebStorm Blog

The Smartest JavaScript IDE

Early Access Program

WebStorm 9 EAP is Open!

Ekaterina Prigara

Please give a warm welcome to the Early Access Program for WebStorm 9!
Go ahead and download WebStorm 9 EAP right now.

As you may remember, back in May we published our development roadmap for the next version of WebStorm, featuring Meteor support, Gulp integration, spy-js for Node.js and other exciting new features.

While some of the features in that list are still cooking and going to be introduced in the following EAP builds, here is a list of new features you can already try:

– Updated Live Edit feature that can now automatically update your Node.js app on any changes
– Spy-js for Node.js applications
– PhoneGap/Cordova integration
– Postfix templates for JavaScript
– Improved Editorconfig plugin

Let’s have a closer look at some of these new features. Of course, later we’ll follow up with more blog posts to provide a more detailed overview of all new features.

Live Edit

Updated Live Edit feature now works with Node.js applications. Start your debug session and make some changes in the code. To try the changes in action, click the Update Application button on the debugger tool window or in the main Run menu, or press Ctrl+F10 on Windows or Linux (or cmd+F10 on Mac OS).

Live Edit first tries to update the app incorporating your changes without restarting the Node.js server; if hotswap fails, the server is restarted.

To learn more, refer to Live Edit updates in WebStorm 9 – What’s new?

Spy-js for Node.js

Spy-js now allows you to trace and profile your Node.js application. Create a new spy-js for Node.js Run configuration. Select Edit configurations from the drop-down menu at the top right-hand corner of the navigation bar, or from the Run menu.

Just like a Node.js Run configuration, it will start your application. Spy-js tool window will show you the list of events, event call stack and quick evaluation. As with spy-js for JavaScript, you can jump to the trace and source files and configure capture exclusions.

To learn more, refer to Spy-js: WebStorm secret service and Tracing, debugging and profiling Node.js with spy-js.

PhoneGap/Cordova integration

Introducing integration for PhoneGap and Cordova in WebStorm. After installing and configuring PhoneGap, you can facilitate your development workflow by executing run and emulate commands with the help of new a PhoneGap/Cordova Run configuration.

This integration also features a new project generator for PhoneGap and Cordova, and a plugin manager that helps you install plugins from the Cordova plugin registry or any other repository. Moreover, all these features also work with Ionic.
More good news is that PhoneGap/Cordova plugin is open source, so you can send us pull requests.

Editorconfig plugin

Editorconfig helps developers define and share code style configuration. We’ve contributed to the Editorconfig plugin for IntelliJ Platform to make it more stable. When enabled, Editorconfig overrides the IDE Code style settings by those specified in .editorconfig file.
You can install it from the plugin repository via Preferences | Plugins.

Postfix completion for JavaScript

Postfix completion lets you transform an already typed expression to another one based on the postfix you add. The list of available postfix templates can be found in Preferences | Editor | Postfix completion.
Here is a simple example:
Type err.log, press Tab, and you’ll get console.log(err).

And last but not least, there’s also smart backspace, a new editor feature that we’d like to share with you. Please read this blog post on the IntelliJ IDEA blog to learn more about it. It is also available in WebStorm 9 EAP.

We’d really appreciate your feedback on the new features. You can post your comments here or in our issue tracker.

Please note that EAP builds do NOT require an active license and can be used for up to 30 days. To get notifications of new EAP builds as they become available, subscribe to the EAP channel in Settings | Updates.

This post is part of a series of posts covering features in WebStorm 9 EAP:

Develop with pleasure!
JetBrains WebStorm Team

Code Quality Analysis in WebStorm Live Edit Updates in WebStorm 9 — What’s New?

Comments below can no longer be edited.

61 Responses to WebStorm 9 EAP is Open!

Steve says:
August 6, 2014
You don’t know how long I’ve been waiting for this!
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 6, 2014
  Hope you like our new features. And don’t forget submit feature requests and bug reports to our tracker.
  - Steve says:
    August 7, 2014
    Will do 😉
Morgan says:
August 7, 2014
It’s great to see that the scrollbars are gone (on OSX)! Real space saver for me working on a laptop! 🙂 If I could only toggle away the left gutter as well, it would be really nice to work with a split view.

The postfix completions are genius! I just wish they were customizeable.. I have so many things I want postfix completion for, and e.g. “return” is so common for me that I simply want it to be “.r” insteadof “.return” – customizability is the key here. “.fe” could become “.forEach(function($name$) { $END$ })” or “_.each(function(){})” depending on what your needs are.

Overall the gui feels alot snappier than before which is great 🙂

There is one big feature that would really change everything: support for ** sweet.js **. That would be the last alt-js language you’d ever need to support since every alt-js can be built from a combination of sweet.js macros. Really, the only thing stopping me from adapting the genius sweet.js magic into our project is that intellij/webstorm would flip out 😛 I would have to go back to sublime text if I want to work with sweet.js; and I really don’t want to do that. Can you please consider supporting sweet.js? – it would change the whole industry!

Thanks
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 7, 2014
  Thank you for the early feedback! We really appreciate that.
  For now postfix templates are not customisable, but we have plans to make it them configurable like Live templates.
  Quick tip: you can type something, then put . and hit cmd-J to get the autocompletion pupup with the list of available postfix templates (+ some Angular templates).
  
  For sweet.js support please vote and follow this feature request: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-10934
  
  Thanks!
Colton McCormack says:
August 8, 2014
Nice updates! What I’m really holding out for though is the first EAP with Gulp integration and Meteor support! Those will have a big affect on my productivity. Excited!
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 8, 2014
  You have to wait a bit more for these features, but it won’t be long!
name says:
August 9, 2014
Please add first class Perl support (like Python support in PyCharm)
http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-12708
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 9, 2014
  Sorry, but we don’t have on making Perl IDE.
Thomas Le says:
August 13, 2014
Will we see Phonegap/cordova support on phpstorm too?
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 13, 2014
  You can try it with the latest build of PhpStorm 8 EAP (138.1505), you just need to install PhoneGap plugin via Preferences | Plugins.
Keith Wedinger says:
August 13, 2014
Does the latest IntelliJ IDEA EAP build include the latest Webstorm EAP features?
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 13, 2014
  Yes, try IntelliJ IDEA 14 EAP (138.1503). Live Edit and PhoneGap are available as plugins.
david says:
August 13, 2014
Were the performance upgrades from the roadmap pushed in this along with these few features? I have been having 5-25 second waits when switching in to WS8 from other apps on a late 2013 MBP/OSX 10.9.4/2.94 i5/8 GB RAM
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 13, 2014
  We are working on JavaScript support performance improvements: indexing, completion. It’s not there yet, we need to make it stable before merging to the current dev branch.
  - Ivan Pauletti says:
    October 28, 2014
    Please made this a major point. I have 37 days to decide if I renew my subscription and if Webstorm performance is not addressed I probably wont renew and even go back to textmate/sublime/coda. I really like the IDE but its HUGELY slow and expensive concerning memory in MacOs. Please let us know if we have these improvements.
    - Ekaterina Prigara says:
      October 28, 2014
      Please try WebStorm 9 that was released last week.
Simon says:
August 13, 2014
Just wondering if React.js support is in this EAP build? Thanks!
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 13, 2014
  No, please vote for this feature and follow the updates on its status: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-10136
Stefan says:
August 13, 2014
Awesome new features. Any chance of these, especially the “Live edit” and “Spy-js”, coming to PHPStorm? – Once someone at Jetbrains told me that #Webstorm was #PHPStorm’s little brother, so, the least would be to have the big brother see some of that magic as well.

Looking forward to it.
Thank you.
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 13, 2014
  Thanks! Yes, all new features are already available in PhpStorm 8 EAP latest build: http://eap.jetbrains.com/phpstorm
  You just need to install Live Edit and spy-js plugins via Preferences | Plugins.
  - Stefan says:
    August 14, 2014
    Pure awesomeness. Thank you.
zoomclub says:
August 13, 2014
Builders are coming on fast. First Grunt, then Gulp and now there is Webpack, which will likely take the lead. Should try to get support for Webpack into Webstorm right away as well.
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 14, 2014
  We haven’t received any requests to support Webpack yet, so please add this feature request to the issue tracker: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues/WEB
  Thanks!
  - Jón Rúnar Helgason says:
    October 30, 2014
    For anyone passing by the comments interested in webpack support, there is now a ticket/issue regarding the matter. Feel free to vote.
    - Jón Rúnar Helgason says:
      October 30, 2014
      And now with a link: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-14019
Script-Noob says:
August 17, 2014
Are there any tutorials on how to integrate Phonegap in WebStorm?
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 18, 2014
  Not yet. Follow the blog for updates, we will add one soon.
Dave says:
August 18, 2014
Performance working in large projects (written in Meteor) has REALLY improved. The editor use to freeze at least 5 times a day (8 hour days). Doesn’t seem to lock up at all any more. After September 5th what can we do? I really don’t want to go back to 8, I’ve been using the 9 EAP full-time since the day after it came out and have had next to no problems.
aaron says:
August 19, 2014
great to see nodejs debugging/tracing support in this release. by all means, continue with deeper nodejs/javascript integration — including deployment (cloud, etc.) and tooling (grunt, etc.). IMO, this tool should focus on the JavaScript (client/server) stack story exclusively. AngularJS and NodeJS being the priority. Make sure your deployment (Azure/AWS) and tooling (GruntJS, etc.) story is solid too .

i’ve been watching this product for more than a year, and will end up purchasing your product with the 9 release because of nodejs debugging integration.

also, please allow for more advanced themeing — or open your platform up to allow for extensions here (and I know about the one ColorIDE plugin — it’s not enough).
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  August 20, 2014
  Hello Aaron,
  Thank you for your feedback!
  Actually Node.js built-in debugger was introduced back in WebStorm 3. However, spy-js is a real game changer and we’re very excited that it support Node.js tracing.
  In WebStorm 9 we’re adding Gulp integration in addition to existing Grunt console. Stay tuned!
makzr says:
September 3, 2014
Does it run on OS X Yosemite (Java 8)?
- Dennis Ushakov says:
  September 3, 2014
  By default it runs on Java 6 due to list of known problems with Java 8 on OS X, but you can change this behaviour as described here
Bob Arndt says:
September 6, 2014
Any reason the very useful “New project from existing files” item was removed from the File menu? I’m guessing it had to be some sort of oversight in the beta version because it’s now a heck of a lot less convenient to create a new WebStorm project from an existing folder.

If it’s not an oversight, PLEASE put it back in. Thanks.
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  September 8, 2014
  No, we did it on purpose. We believe that the most easy way to open a new project is by using Open…
  Could you please a bit more what option from New project from existing files dialog you used?
  - Simon says:
    September 8, 2014
    If you work in an organization where not everyone uses Webstorm (shocking, I know), or where Webstorm projects aren’t committed to source control or even if you just want to be able to work in an Open Source project, you need to be able to take an existing source tree and open it in Webstorm.
    - Ekaterina Prigara says:
      September 8, 2014
      You can just open the directory with all your sources with Open… action. It will automatically create a WebStorm project.
      - Bob Arndt says:
        September 9, 2014
        Ekaternina,
        
        Irrespective of what those in your office believe about what is most efficient, why would you REMOVE something that is useful to customers? The previous wizard-based functionality offered the ability to “Select Scenario”, choose “Project Root”, “Test Sources”, etc., the server to use and so on.
        
        Again, I ask, why would you choose to remove it? Simply opening a directory is NOT the easiest or best way.
        
        Thanks.
        
        Ekaterina Prigara says:
        September 9, 2014
        Dear Bob, please note that this is an early preview version of WebStorm and we’re allowing ourselves to make some changes in it that we think might be beneficial and simplify the user workflow. Your feedback is very important for us and we would reconsider removing project wizard.
        Our initial assumption was that the project wizard dialog is too complicated and unintuitive and you can do all the same actions once you already opened your project.
modestemax says:
September 7, 2014
please the last build of webstorm 9 eap 138.1988 for linux is corrupted, can install it
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  September 7, 2014
  Thanks for report, we’ll check it.
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  September 8, 2014
  Could you please provide us with more details:
  – what linux are you using?
  – have you installed WebStorm in a completely empty folder?
Michael McCutcheon says:
September 15, 2014
Please provide support for Dust.

https://github.com/linkedin/dustjs

This is being used by a very large project I’m working on and it just sucks having no support at all in WebStorm for the dust templates.

thanks!
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  September 16, 2014
  Please submit it as a feature request on our issue tracker. Thank you!
  - Michael McCutcheon says:
    September 17, 2014
    Created feature request:
    
    http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-13413
    
    Thank you!
sandeep says:
October 11, 2014
when the stable version is getting released for WebStorm 9? any probable date?
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  October 12, 2014
  Quite soon.
Aaron says:
October 17, 2014
I’m currently using Meteor and MongoDb/MongoMini, will you be providing tracing/debugging for this too in this release?
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  October 17, 2014
  With WebStorm 9 you’ll be able to debug server-side and client-side Meteor code. Check out this blog post. And you can trace Meteor apps with spy-js (not server-side code).
Natan Valentim says:
October 24, 2014
My WebStorm 9 broke whenever I open an *.min.js file in debug mode… Can someone help me please?!
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  October 24, 2014
  It’s an already known issue, we’ve fixed that and will ship a bug fix update next week.
  - Natan Valentim says:
    October 29, 2014
    When the update will be ready?!
    - Ekaterina Prigara says:
      October 29, 2014
      Today.
Alon says:
October 26, 2014
Webstorm 9 broke our debugger. since upgrading the node.js debugger just magically stopped working. Known issue? any clue?

the regular “run” does work as expected..
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  October 27, 2014
  Are you using the latest WebStorm 9?
steve K says:
October 29, 2014
I had project files in a “Project” subdirectory in the WebStorm 8.0 folders.
When I installed WebStorm 9.0 it uninstalled the WS 8.0 files ALONG WITH MY “PROJECT” FOLDER!
I have been unable to recover any of those files through Recycle Bin or with 3rd party recovery software. Might those files still be on my machine somewhere?
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  October 29, 2014
  What OS version are you using? And where WebStorm 8 was located?
  - steve K says:
    October 29, 2014
    Sorry – Windows 7.
    The Projects folder was in this folder:
    E:\web_dev\WebStorm 8.0/
    
    I’ve tried several recovery programs, and carefully reviewing the registry, but can’t understand why the deleted folder/files aren’t showing up anywhere, recoverable or not…
    
    thanks
    - Ekaterina Prigara says:
      October 29, 2014
      Sorry, but there’s nothing we can do to help. Unfortunately.
Jack says:
November 12, 2014
This is FANTASTIC, I really love using this. I’m using EPIC with it’s perl ide, would be nice if this had solid perl support, betting you guys aren’t going to do that, but thought I’d ask 😉
- Ekaterina Prigara says:
  November 12, 2014
  Thanks! Sorry, no plans for Perl support.