Today we are updating the Electric Imp IDE to version 1.8.0, and are pleased to announce it incorporates one of the features you’ve been requesting for some time: the ability to create a new model without immediately assigning a device to it.
When you next load up the IDE – you may be required to log in again first – you’ll see a new Create New Model button over on the left toward the top of the Model Navigator panel. Click on it and you will be presented with a dialog box which gives you the opportunity to name the new model and add it to the Model Navigator.
New models created this way will appear in the Model Navigator’s Inactive Models section, and the Workspace will be loaded with the new model’s as-yet-empty agent and device code listings, ready for you to start writing.
If you wish to assign the new model to one or more of your devices, the Create New Model dialog lists all your devices, and you can easily select the one or ones you want to be assigned to the new model you’ll make when you hit the dialog’s Create Model button.
Of course, you can continue to create new models using the existing Device Settings dialog box as you have in the past.
IDE 1.8.0 doesn’t only add the new model creation mechanism. In addition to stepping on a number of small bugs, we’ve also configured the IDE to save the state of code folds – aka code rollups – so that blocks of code between braces that have been hidden for clarity will stay hidden when you go back to the code later. You should note, however, that this feature currently works only locally – load the IDE up on a different machine and the folds will not be preserved.
Bonus Pro Tip
The IDE uses the Ace code display system to present agent and device code in the workspace. Ace makes a huge number of useful keyboard shortcuts available to the active pane. Check out this list of them all.
Log in to the updated IDE here.
Ben Day
Frontend Developer