

Personally, I find Web Storm a little clunky but it works across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. JetBrains Web Storm is another IDE that allows you to create Node.js applications with a similar set of features to the Visual Studio extension above. If you don’t already have Visual Studio it may be an expensive option. The following is an example of a very simple Hello World application with a break point set and the local variables showing up in the panel at the bottom. You can set break-points, examine variables, set watches and so on. The Extension will have added some extra options in to the New Project dialog. Once installed, you can create a new node.js project in the same way you’d create any new project. In the future, I would expect it to be available directly in Visual Studio through the Tools->Extensions and Updates… manager. If you don’t want to default download (which is for the latest version of visual studio) go to the downloads tab and select the appropriate download for your version of Visual Studio. To get the extension for the Node.js tools for Visual Studio, go to. I like this option because I’ve been working with Visual Studio since version 2.1 (that came out in the early-to-mid-90s). NET based applications, or if you are simply used to working with Visual Studio. This is very useful if you are doing cross platform development interacting with. There is a plug in for Visual Studio that is in beta (at the time of writing) which allows you to create node.js projects.

While you can use a basic text editor, or even a more sophisticated text editor, IDEs are also available for writing node.js. Something that more developer tools should do. One thing I really like about the windows installer is that it offers to add Node.js to the PATH. The “Install” button should give you the correct installer for the platform you are on, but if not, or your are downloading for a different platform you can get a list of each download available, including source code. To install Node.js download the installer from the node.js homepage. There are no “Browser Compatibility” issues.

Since JavaScript written for Node.js is running on one platform issues that plague browser based JavaScript does not occur on Node.js. It runs on the Google V8 engine which effectively means it is cross platform as it can run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Node.js is a platform for executing JavaScript outside of the browser.
