10 November 2011, 15:15

Orion editor features in Firefox 8

Orion logo

Mozilla's Firefox 8 has introduced the Orion editor as an alternative to the current Scratchpad editor which is used for experimenting with and debugging JavaScript code. The new editor is disabled by default in Firefox 8, but enabled by default in Firefox Aurora and the nightly builds of the browser. Orion supports JavaScript and CSS, which was introduced in Scratchpad in Firefox 6, and introduces additional features such as syntax highlighting. Currently only English is supported, as some problems were identified with handling non-English language text.

As the Orion editor is disabled by default in Firefox 8, users who wish to use it will need to enable it: enter about:config in the address bar, enter devtools in the filter box and change the devtools.editor.component attribute to orion. Shift+F4 will then open the Scratchpad with the Orion editor.

Developers interested in other uses of the Orion technology can download the Eclipse Orion server for Windows, Linux or Mac OS X under the terms of the Eclipse Public Licence (EPL).

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