The release of a new version of the WebStorm development environment is just around the corner, but first, the JetBrains development team is publishing a release candidate with version number 2023.1. This release candidate brings a number of innovations, including a new plug-in that provides Astro support, as well as additional improvements to the new interface and extended TypeScript support.
After releasing two beta versions of WebStorm 2023.1 at the beginning of March, the developers at JetBrains have announced the availability of a release candidate for their web IDE in a recent blog entry. The WebStorm interface also offers new features in the Release Candidate.
In the last release of the development environment, JetBrains introduced support for a range of frameworks. Now, with this release candidate, the development team announces that a “long-awaited” plug-in for the web framework Astro is finally available. This plugin offers basic functions such as syntax highlighting, code completion with automatic imports, refactoring, navigation, and correct formatting.
Additionally, JetBrains has added TypeScript support in Vue templates, which is activated when developers set the lang attribute to ts in a script tag. WebStorm is now also able to automatically add all necessary imports for Vue, Svelte, Astro, and Angular templates when developers copy and paste code from one file to another.
On June 21 and 22, 2023, the enterprise JavaScript conference enterJS will be hosted in Darmstadt. The conference will explore JavaScript and TypeScript language innovations, new and established frameworks, accessibility, and software architecture in over 35 lectures. Full-day workshops will be available both on-site and online.
The interface of the web IDE has been extended in the previous beta version, allowing developers to save multiple different tool window layouts and switch between them as needed. Based on feedback on these innovations, a redesigned Run widget is now available, with developers able to use Show Hidden Tabs to display hidden tabs and vertical splitting of tool windows. A compact mode and project tabs are available for macOS.
It is also possible to zoom in and out in WebStorm, enabling users to enlarge or reduce all user interface elements at once for a better overview. Interested parties can find more details about the release candidate and information about the previous beta version in the blog entry. To test this version, developers can download it from the JetBrains site, but they must have an active WebStorm license or sign up for a free 30-day trial to install and run this build.
