The most efficient web development environment.
Create your web solutions in a fast and innovative way, reducing the development time in up to 80%.
That is how its own official page describes ScriptCase, a Rapid Application Development (RAD) platform written in PHP.
In spite of having some (many) problems, ScriptCase sufficiently fulfills what it’s up to: a tool to create web applications using PHP and JavaScript, integrating multiple different databases (e.g. MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL) in a very fast way and providing utilities like forms, grids, searches, reports, charts, internacionalization, export data to PDF/XLS/CSV, and many other options. Although ScriptCase provides all these benefits, some (not so) small details in its environment are very frustrating.
I used to work with Sublime Text editor and there I could customize it completely and also use plugins for just about everything, from shortcut keys to autocompletes, snippets, FTP, versioning and revision control system, documentation, and the list goes on. But all these facilities are gone in ScriptCase.
The problem
ScriptCase has its own IDE and the code editor is CodeMirror with only search and replace functions. That’s not even the basics:
- There’s no autocomplete
- No shotcut keys
- For saving your code you must use mouse to click the Save button, which is placed in the top of the IDE
- And quite often you misclick a button in the top toolbar just because it’s placed right under the menu which opens when you mouse over it
- The code editor is always reloaded after you save your code, thus removing the focus from the editor and losing cursor and scroll position; that forces you to always search where you were before
- and many other details that make you waste a lot of time and end up decreasing productivity
Solution
Unfortunately there’s no way to integrate ScriptCase with another IDE or external editor, neither change its source code. But here is the solution I found: create a browser extension which, working with ScriptCase’s internal functions, solves some of these problems. And that’s why I created the extension ScriptCase Tools.
ScriptCase Tools
The purpose of ScriptCase Tools is very simple: improve usability of ScriptCase’s development environment adding (and some times removing) functionalities in its IDE.
I created this extension using HTML/CSS/JavaScript, some browser APIs, some of ScriptCase’s internal functions (JavaScript) and localStorage API to store user preferences.
Here is a printscreen showing the available options in ScriptCase Tools v0.2:
Installing, contributing and more
The easiest way to install ScriptCase Tools is getting the official release available at Chrome Web Store.
Instructions for manual installation or information about the latest releases are available at its official repository. There you can also see all its source code, contribute in development, send suggestions, ask questions, report bugs and get more information.
Contact can also be made through this page or via e-mail to [email protected].
EDIT: ScriptCase Tools is constantly updated and is now in v1.5.0.
More info: https://github.com/AndersonMamede/scriptcase-tools/#features
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