Recent improvements to editor

Thanks for making such a great product, I really do enjoy using it

I’m all for improvements, but please understand how your decisions impact your entire user base.

Changing the keystrokes and syntax highlighting on your users without giving them the option to customize them completely disrupts their ability to be productive.

This morning I can no longer easily visually parse my code and have to lookup and learn new key combinations, rather than focusing on creating code and finding/fixing bugs

For those of us who use your software to make a living, this costs me time and money.

Just a different perspective to remember as you roll-out changes.

Keep being awesome!

(PS: I will look to see if there is a way to switch back to the previous editor version, hopefully that’ll get me back on track)

@yaustar Hmm. Is there a way to switch back to the previous Playcanvas editor? I cannot seem to find anything.

Looks like I’ll need to edit with a local text editor and copy-and-paste back to Playcanvas. Not optimum but will get me back to work.

What do you mean by anything? If you are trying to find in files, it requires a file to be open before Ctrl + Shift + F works.

We apologise for this and we did try to keep the theme as close as we can to what we had previously. (I’m also working on a forum post to be able to change the theme via a User Script/Violent Monkey)

Is there particular syntax highlighting that has caused issues?

For the short term, use the command palette to help (Ctrl + Shift + P)/(F1) which brings up:

Most shortcuts should be similar. Which ones are missing/different in particular?

Apologies. I meant often used keystroke combinations have changed, like deleting a line/duplicating a line.

It’s amazing how disruptive all those little changes are. First thing any coder does is set up the editor to their usual keystroke combinations and syntax colour highlighting.

That way you can just work by habit and pattern, not having to re-learn things.

Depending on the coder, they may also require specific setting for accessibility, poor vision, etc.

Hmm, I wonder if there is a way to add your own shortcuts from a Visual Code Editor setup via a user script :thinking: Currently they are set to the VSC defaults effectively

Now that we are using the same text editor, it might be possible to bring a lot of the customisation over

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Customization would be ideal, as each coder has their own established patterns. More work for you, but makes everyone productive.

For instance, I prefer variable values to have a different colour than function names (sample attached)

And to be very clear, I certainly don’t want my choices to become the default, that’d just make someone else unproductive :laughing:

One step towards that can be done now via a browser extension and user script: Changing themes in new Code Editor with Monaco

Added variable syntax highlighting to be different from function names here: https://github.com/playcanvas/editor/issues/604

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Thanks so much for the quick replies and work-around :man_superhero:

I truly appreciate how responsive Playcanvas folks are to their customer issues, it’s amazing! :clap:

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@SheepVsGravity in my haste, I forgot to mention https://github.com/playcanvas/playcanvas-sync

This tool syncs a local copy of code to PlayCanvas Editor so you can use your local code editor like VSCode or Webstorm.

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