Popcode

Popcode is a simple HTML/CSS/JavaScript editing environment for use in the classroom. It's a lot like JSBin, JSFiddle, or Codepen, but it focuses on giving specific, immediate, human-friendly feedback when the code contains errors.

Project status

Popcode is the official first semester editing environment for the ScriptEd program in the 2016–2017 school year.

Try it out

You can try out Popcode at https://popcode.org.

Features

Edit HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the browser; in-browser preview updates as you type.
Get immediate, comprehensive, easy-to-understand feedback about problems in your code.
Errors can't be ignored. If there are any errors in the code, the live preview is replaced by an error list.
JavaScript runtime errors are also reported in human-friendly language, with annotations in the source code pointing out the source of the problem.
One-click login using GitHub account; all work is saved remotely to Firebase when logged in.
Pop out preview of web page in its own window.
Export to GitHub gist.
Import starter code from a GitHub gist.

About validation

The validation system is the main point of this project. Most syntax checkers, linters, and style enforcers tend to provide feedback using language that is geared toward experienced coders, not beginners. Thus, providing a translation of error messages into plain English for students is the overriding concern of this project.

Popcode tends toward strict enforcement of lint and code style, even when enforced style decisions are arbitrary, under the philosophy that giving students one right way to do it eliminates ambiguity and aids the learning process.

Feature roadmap

Check out the Trello board.

Technical details

Popcode uses React to render views, Redux to manage application state, Ace as the code editor, Browserify to package the client-side application, and Babel to compile ES2016+JSX into ES5.

Popcode detects code errors using slowparse, htmllint, Rework CSS, PrettyCSS, jshint, and esprima.

Architecture Overview

The architecture of Popcode’s code base is best understood through the lifecycle of a user interaction:

User interactions are first captured by handlers in React components.
These components propagate the event to the view controller, the Workspace component.
The Workspace dispatches one or more Redux actions.
Dispatched actions are consumed by the reducers, which update the store.
Action creators also perform other business logic, such as initiating validation of project code and persisting changes to persistent storage.
When the action lifecycle is complete, the Workspace receives updated props from the store and propagates them to its descendants.

Contributing

Yes please! There are a ton of ways Popcode could be made better. Pull requests, bug reports, feature suggestions are all very very welcome.

Running locally

Pretty easy. Just check out the code, then run:

$ npm install

That'll pull down the dependencies. Then run:

$ gulp dev

This will start a local static server, and open it in your browser. The first pageload will be rather slow as it compiles the bundle; after you change files, assets are recompiled incrementally and your browser automatically reloads.

When you're done, lint and make sure tests pass before opening a pull request:

$ npm test

License

Popcode is distributed under the MIT license. See the attached LICENSE file for all the sordid details.

Contributors

Mat Brown (maintainer)
Alejandro AR
Vaibhav Verma
Alex Pelan
Katie Conneally created the name Popcode
Logo design, "Pop" concept, and UI by the team at [http://redpeakgroup.com](Red Peak): Andrew Haug, Aya Kawabata, Jieun Lee, Achu Fones, Iwona Waluk, Stewart Devlin, and Katie Conneally

Thanks to

Bugsnag provides excellent error alerting to Popcode for free.

Contact

Feel free to email me at mat.a.brown@gmail.com if you have any questions.

samdec11 / popcode