Heterogeneous IDE to IDE Support
If you’d rather stay in your IDE when a colleague starts a shared session, you now can – you don’t need to join using a browser. No matter what IDE they’re using, you can join using Eclipse, IntelliJ or VS Code, as long as you have the CodeTogether 3.0 plugin/extension installed. Of course, the browser still works as well.
Note: You need to join the CodeTogether Insiders program and log in from your IDE to be able to join sessions from there. Of course, if you’re using CodeTogether behind the firewall with our on-premises distribution, this capability will be available to your team as soon as you update your installation to this version.
When you connect from your IDE of choice, the familiar look & feel, and preferred key bindings make the shared coding experience far more intuitive. Typing, scrolling, etc. are more responsive as well. Your IDE benefits from the language smarts of the host IDE, receiving content assist, validation and navigation capabilities for frameworks it may not normally have support for. As with the browser, you have access to the host’s entire workspace, not just the files they have open (except for files explicitly hidden from the session), so you have the freedom to explore all projects as desired.
For more details, please see our IDE to IDE page.
Type Together
The ability to type simultaneously with others in the same file is another oft requested major feature that has made it to this version. Prior versions of CodeTogether would allow simultaneous typing in different files, but you were prevented from doing so in the same file – this constraint has been removed.
Coding together is an intuitive and fluid experience. Maybe you’d just like to correct a small typo while your colleague continues to code. Perhaps you’d like to examine code elsewhere, in the same file or another, ultimately deciding to start driving instead or coding on your own – the CodeTogether UI and control flow intelligence just works to keep you and your team coding smoothly.
Miscellaneous Fixes and Improvements
- We’ve added syntax highlighting for a number of additional languages, notably Ruby, YAML, LaTeX and ABAP.
- It was annoying not to have parenthesis inserted when you select a method suggestion from IntelliSense – they are now inserted automatically.
- Several bugs around the incorrect closure of dirty files were fixed.
- For IntelliJ, some modules were incorrectly displayed at the root level of the workspace – now fixed.
What’s Next?
Here are some key capabilities that are coming soon to CodeTogether.
- A shared console – after IDE to IDE support, this has been our next most popular feature request
- A shared terminal – not just a terminal on the host system, but a shared terminal, one accessible to all members in the session
- Refactoring support
Have a feature you’d like to see implemented in the near future? Consider creating an issue, or voting for an existing one to increase its priority.
As always, thank you for the support and feedback, send us a shout on Twitter. If you like working with CodeTogether, please do us a favor and tell your friends and colleagues about us – thank you!
