‘Tide’ packs a punch!

I have been using Eclipse at work and IntelliJ Idea at home for quite some time and find both very good. But do you really need a full fledged IDE when you are just trying out some basic java code or samples which dont run into hundreds of lines of code. You could very well use some notepad app for that, but would still miss things like adding external libraries, compiling and running your main program quickly etc. You would definitley need some basic ide without much fuss.

Just out of curiosity, I started looking around for a light weight IDE for java and TIDE popped up on google. Commentors on forums urged to use this one as it was very simple and small to get started, no installation required and works well for pure java projects. Sure enough, the entire application is only a jar file just under 4MB. Now thats impressive. I downloaded the jar from sourceforge and got started with it.

Fired it up using command

java -jar tide.jar

and there is was, a tiny IDE at work! It asked for basic configuration like project location, jdk installation location etc and in few quick clicks I was ready to go!

The interface is very simple and functional and themeable with tabs for different things like the console output, compile messages etc. Creating and editing packages and classes is quick and without a fuss. The tiny ide has excellent menu items useful for setting up projects, configuring and running applications, support for external tools like ant, git, subversion, PMD, findbugs etc. So if you depend on either of these for project work, you can enjoy the support this IDE provides.

I was able to setup a small project and execute it in no time. Tide also provides for class templates and autocompletion capabilities which you can extend and add some more of your own. The only down side I encountered was that the ide is purely for java, so much so that the only files I could create or edit were java classes. I found no way to add an xml config file, or a properties file in the project, which kind of defeats the purpose of an ide, but you can always add/edit these files externally. Opening the project location as a directory in sublime will support this very well.

What suprises me is that the developer has packed in so much functionality and third party support into this application and made it available as a runnable jar which does not really need any additional setup to run. This definitely come as a boon for less powered machines which may find it heavy to run eclipse or idea. So if you are low on resources or cant spare much memory Tide would be a good fit.

To be able to run tide from the command prompt, I tried a little hack and seems to work perfectly. I created a shell script to launch the jar using the above command and added an ampersand sign to it. so contents of the script are like so

java -jar /path/to/my/tide.jar &

This will execute the java code and set it as a background process in linux, this frees up the terminal and you can continue working with something else.

Also I created a softlink inside the /usr/bin folder using sudo rights and point it to my script which in turn launches tide.

sudo ln -s /path/to/script tide

This hack now allows me to execute tide from anywhere on the prompt, and it fires up the teeny tiny ide to get on with some quick code. Try it out, you’d be impressed!

Upgraded to Elemenatary Freya Beta 2

I had been waiting for a long time for the second beta of Elementary Freya to come out, tracking its progress on the launchpad site and see bugs move gradually from new to in progress to fixed! Six month was the wait to be precise and Elementary OS team has announced the release of the beta 2. I read the reviews and many people who had been using it since beta 1 vowed about its stability and use for daily computing. I figured for a casual home user, a bit buggy beta wont do much harm and so went ahead and replaced my Luna setup with the fresh install of Freya beta 2. Honesty after waiting six months, I do not have the patience for RC1 to come out. I want to experience the Freya awesomeness sooner.

And I think installing beta has payed off. What I get to experience is a really polished, clean interface and a relatively stable system which I can use on day to day basis. The login screen is just a taste of what elementary has to offer. The subtle changes to header bar for most apps and wingpanel which changes color based on what wallpaper you put up are some of the cool things which an elementary user can brag about.

There are annoying bugs ofcourse. Sometimes it just triggers a shutdown for no good reason. I have seen that happen when browsing on FF with many tabs open. Its not frequent but irritates quite a bit if I am working on something important. I could also see some jittery animation while maximizing, minimizing the windows couple of times. Does not appear to have a smooth transition from smaller window to maximized window. Audience player sometimes has the horizontal scroll bar visible even in full screen mode, which distracts when watching some video. But these are small things which I hope will get polished out by the time Freya releases sometime down the line.

One good thing I noticed when using the applications, is that they remember the last activity they were doing. So say, I was looking through some files in the Downloads folder and close the file explorer, it opens the same location when reopened. This is helpful, if you happen to close the window accidently and dont want to find you way back into the directory you were currently working on. The Audience video player also seems to remember the last played file and time. So you could simply start watching a video from where you left off.

I have gone ahead and tweaked elementary a bit to suite my taste. Like having the button layout on the right, installing WPS office suite for documents and excel editing etc. I tried to change some icon themes, but frankyly the elementary theme exists for a reason and I could see why I should not install some other icons and theme to spice up something thats already cool!

Maybe the only complaint I have thus far, is the dark themes for Audience, Terminal and Photos applications. These apps looks like black sheeps in the herd of elementary apps. I read somewhere that these themes are configurable, but havent found the tweak yet.

All in all, I like what I see, I like what I get to experience. It feels good to experience something which is designed with beauty in mind. The philosophy of the guys at elementary to design the OS is worth commending. The UX they bring to the linux users is very exciting for new users and seasoned ones alike.

From beta 2 to RC1 to final release, I am going to stick with the current installation and make frequent system updates till I get the real deal!!