Small Nice Things in WebStorm

JetBrains were kind enough to give the wavesurfer.js team a license for WebStorm, so I started exploring all the nice JavaScript-specific features in WebStorm. Since WebStorm is so polised, it is something to learn from when comparing with JavaScript packages for Emacs.

Comparing Emacs

Having said that, even though Emacs packages are written by single individuals, mostly, in their free time, they are still quite comparable with the commercial product developed by a company (and sometimes Emacs modes are better).

Here’s the full list of JavaScript-related packages I use in Emacs:

I don’t use any Emacs-based JavaScript debuggers (preferring Chrome devtools and node-inspector), but there are plenty of them: Kite, swank-js etc.

Attention to Details

So, back to WebStorm.

highlight variables

Of course, Emacs’ highlighting of variables can be tweaked the same way, easilly.

indentation

This is not so important for JavaScript, but for CoffeeScript it is really helpful. In Emacs you cannot display them as nicely and subtly.

displaying the beginning of a block

scrollbar overlay