Mozilla Labs lands on Bespin

Mozilla Labs has shown Bespin for the first time. Bespin is a project to create a new cloud and web based development environment which will act as a collaborative working space for coders. The project has been incubating for some months and in it's debut the Mozilla developers show web based editing and project browsing using HTML5 features, such as Canvas, to create a clean and stylish interface, which is already quite responsive.

The editor already has syntax highlighting, import and export, undo and preview-in-browser. It sports a Ubiquity style command line and a simple tool bar for major features. What is missing in the "initial prototype" is the collaboration functionality, but a "people" icon in the top right of the interface does display an example of what the developers are aiming to achieve. The project browser eschews the traditional tree view for a more NextStep/Mac style, multi-column, view of a projects file hierarchy.

Interested developers can try the demo system, where there is also an video introduction to the project, presented by Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer. The source code is available under the Mozilla Public Licence. The name Bespin is a Star Wars reference to the planet Bespin, home of Lando Calrissian and the Cloud City.

(djwm)