The web version of Microsoft Visual Studio Code in bta

For ease of use, Microsoft ported Visual Studio Code to a browser. This web version is available in beta on the vscode.dev site. Visual Studio Code for the web provides local development scenarios, including viewing and editing local files, and quick note taking in Markdown. Developers can also create HTML, JavaScript, and CSS apps through the browser on devices like Chromebooks and iPads.

With browser support for the File System Access API, including Edge and Chrome, Visual Studio Code for the web can be used as a local development tool. In the absence of API support, files can still be opened by downloading them through the browser.

Some limits in the development experience

However, Microsoft has warned that there will be limited experiences with using the desktop app. For example, the terminal and debugger aren’t available because developers can’t compile, debug, and run a Rust or Go app in the browser – although technologies like Pyodid could change that.

Code editing, navigation, and browsing experiences are all a bit more nuanced, according to the Redmond firm. On the desktop application, these actions are generally supplied by language-specific services and compilers that require a file system, a runtime and a computing environment. In the browser, they are provided by services dedicated to languages ​​operating entirely in the browser without a file system and without a runtime. They include in particular a tokenization of sources, syntactic colorization, completions and some single file operations. It works for most programming languages.

The editor also specifies that for JSON, HTML and CSS, the experience is almost identical to the classic application. That for TypeScript, JavaScript and Python is even easier by running natively in the browser. Plus, UI customization plugins like themes, snippets, or maps work with VS Code for the web.