| Stage | Create |
| Maturity | Minimal |
| Content Last Reviewed | 2020-10-20 |
Thanks for visiting this direction page on the Live Preview features of the Web IDE. This page belongs to the Editor group of the Create stage and is maintained by Kai Armstrong (E-Mail).
Learn more about the Web IDE direction.
Developers working on projects often need to preview their changes while developing, during review and to demo progress. Previewing changes often involves having pre-configured development environments running locally or in the cloud.
With Live Preview in the Web IDE you can view your simple JavaScript apps and static sites, in real time, right next to the code. We're not currently investing in the Live Preview features of the Web IDE, but welcome contributions to improve the existing feature or extend our current Live Preview capabilities.
GitLab is also supportive of 3rd party integrations to extend these features to developers.
In Progress: Add GitPod Button to Open Project in GitPod #228893
Currently Gitpod is adding a native integration to GitLab to support developers opening projects in GitLab. This will allow instance administrators to configure a remote Gitpod instance and provide 1-click access to developers to open projects.
In Discovery: Investigate using Service Workers for client-side Live Preview #218438
In order to support binary and static asset files in Live Preview in the Web IDE an investigation is underway with Codesandbox to use Service Workers to load these files. Current findings summary is in this comment.
In Discovery: Okteto Integration in Web IDE &4139
Currently Okteto is interested in enabling their service through the Web Terminal available in the Web IDE. Discovery is underway to see what blockers exist to enabling this and enhancements that may be required.
Live Preview is currently limited to Javascript applications that can be evaluated in the browser, called client-side evaluation. Extending support to include server-side evalaution would allow more complex applications to be previewed in real time through the Web IDE is not planned.
