A few weeks ago, we wrote about some of the latest developments in Thimble, especially as they relate to working in places with no or limited connectivity. Our latest changes focus on improving the coding experience, for beginners and more experienced coders alike.
Colour Palette extraction for images
This one is awesome. It allows you to easily see what colors are used in any image. Just drag an image into your file tree, and click on it. Thimble will automatically pull out many of the prominent colors used in the image and show you their hexadecimal codes. In this example, I was able to identify one of the colors from a photograph I took on a recent trip, and use it to style my <h2> font.
New settings
You can now enable and disable line wrapping, and decide whether to auto-execute JavaScript, using new options in the Settings menu.
Move files to different folders
You can now move files between folders. Simply right-click the file you want to move, and choose “Move To…” (To create a new folder, right-click anywhere in the file tree.)
Code Folding
You can easily collapse and expand sections of code for easier reading. Just click on the arrows next to the line numbers.
New remixable starter projects
Our curriculum team has come up with some new fun projects to remix. Check out “Three Things I <3,” “My Six-Word Summer,” and the popular “Homework Excuse Generator.”
Expanded browser support
Thimble now works in all modern browsers, including Internet Explorer, Chromebooks, and Safari.
Markdown to HTML and LESS to CSS conversion
These features are for advanced Thimble users.
If you create *.markdown or *.md files, Thimble will automatically create HTML files to go with them, so that the browser will render them. This could be useful for Tutorial files and README files, as well as any other markdown file you want to use.
Thimble will do the same for a limited subset of LESS files. It works the same way: any file.less will automatically create file.css, which will be autogenerated from the LESS file.
In both cases Thimble watches files in the browser filesystem, so you don’t even need to change a setting or push a button for the HTML and CSS files to be created. Also, if you update those files, the generated files will also get refreshed. Magic!
Let us know what you think of the changes by commenting below, dropping us a line at thimble@mozillafoundation.org, or tweeting @mozteach!
Colour palettes, code folding, and new Thimble projects, oh my!