In this tour, you'll explore a space and learn what's possible.
What do you see?
You're currently watching a video stream of an IDE.
The IDE itself is actually running somewhere in the cloud (more specifically, it's in an ephemeral container on an auto-scaling, itopia-managed cluster), but you can simply use it in your browser like it's an on-demand web app.
Why does that matter? Compared to local IDEs...
- ⏳ cloud-based IDEs are faster, because developers get more computing power and spend less time creating/maintaining personal environments.
- 🔐 video-streamed IDEs are more secure, because codebases don't need to be downloaded/streamed to developer devices.
- 💸 browser-based IDEs are cheaper for large teams, because their hardware procurement requirements are decreased.
Note: You can use nearly any IDE in this way - VS Code, PyCharm, Eclipse, etc. - we have a variety of setups in our image catalog. If our catalog is missing something you want, try configuring it for your team via your organization's private catalog or installing it for yourself via Nix.
Another thing to notice is that this space automatically opened this tour repo, and it's simply convenient to have those cloning & opening steps be automated.
Note: You can configure nearly any Git repository to open on launch. Additionally, you can connect to nearly any version control system once inside.
Yes, your mouse works in here!
Try clicking on one of the hyperlinks in this doc.
You'll find that you can smoothly & securely browse the web from inside a space,
which is especially useful for localhost (if you're a web developer)
and private/corporate network browsing (if your admins configure VPC peering).
Your admins can customize network traffic policies (allowlist & blocklist),
but by default all public internet traffic is allowed.
To switch focus back to VS Code, you could simply click anywhere on the VS Code app. However, you should try the window tray.
Try hovering your mouse over the shadow at the top of the webpage - you should see a tray/menu drop down, displaying all open windows. Click on a window title to either expand+focus that window (if it was collapsed) or collapse it (if it was focused).
Try clicking on the Extensions icon to the left. Then, search for "containers". You should see a variety of extensions, including by verified extension developers like Microsoft.
Note: Extensions should work in all itopia-supported IDEs.
We've included a variety of fun projects in the folders adjacent to this file, as well as all necessary runtimes pre-installed in this space for you.
Try getting some project(s) running, and see for yourself how it feels to work in a space!
Note: You can run Docker inside a space if your admin(s) allow it. We've enabled Docker for all Test Drive spaces.
(cd projects/rainbowspace && npm i && npm run dev)
(cd projects/pixel-examples && go run community/raycaster/raycaster.go)
- Sign up for your free trial.
- Check out the docs.
- Browse the image catalog.
- Automate administrative tasks with the CLI.