The Orion development team has been busy! Here are some of the more noteworthy things available in milestone build M6 (March 11, 2011) which is now available for download. Eclipse committers can also use M6 on the hosted demo server at orion.eclipse.org (see instructions).
New visual styling and organization
The Orion pages have received a visual facelift that more clearly organizes the tasks available on a page. The top of the header organizes primary navigation links, global commands, and user information. The dark bar at the bottom of the header provides page-specific interactions. Where possible, pages include breadcrumb navigation in the header. Local actions are still included adjacent to items when appropriate.
Move and copy folders and files
You can now move and copy files in the navigator. Select the files and use the page-level menu to choose a move or copy target. You can move a file or folder to any folder in your “Favorites” or to other folders on the page. (Future support will include drag and drop and more extensive target selection).
Site launching support
The new Sites page allows you to create sites for testing an application developed with Orion. From the Sites page you can create, edit, delete, or launch web sites for testing. Sites will be launched either as a sub-domain of the orion server, or an alternate IP address when running the server locally.
Click on a site to edit it. This brings up a page that allows you to configure what folders and files from your workspace will appear on the site. Typically you will select a folder in your workspace containing an index.html file, and mount that at the root of the site (“/”).
Client side plugins
Orion now includes a JavaScript plugin architecture, allowing extensions to be added within the Orion client without installing them on the server. Plugins can originate from any web page. A small initial set of extension points is available for customizing the client.
Client preference API
A client side preference API has been introducing for storing settings. Preferences are cached in browser local storage, and synchronized in the background with a preference store on the Orion server. This allows preference access to be fast, but still enables settings to follow a user across different browsers or computers. Client side plugins are now persisted in this new preference store, meaning your installed plugins will stay with you when you switch browsers.
Extension point for navigator commands
A new extension point, fileCommands, allows plug-ins to contribute commands to the navigator. A plug-in can specify how many and what types of files it can work with. The command will be contributed in the navigator item menus. See sampleCommandsPlugin.html for an example.
Customize editor tab size
New API has been added to the Orion editor to allow the displayed size of tabs to be customized.
Git status
Orion now has a page showing Git status for any folder in a git repository. To see it, use the action in the file navigator toolbar.
On the left side of the page you can stage changes,
unstage them all,
and commit with the given message.
Note, that the page will show all changes in the repository which the selected folder is associated with.
Git diff
The Git status page also offers two ways of reviewing changes. An inline (unified) compare viewer can be opened by clicking on a file in the Unstaged/Staged area.
To see the changes side by side you can click the button next to the file. The compare viewer will open in a new window/tab.
Deletions are highlighted with red, added lines with green and changed lines with yellow.
User profile view
By choosing Profile in the user menu you can navigate to the User Profile page. This page provides basic information such as your login, name and last login date. You can use this page to update your user profile, change your password, or delete your account.
Last login date
Your last login date is now recorded. You can see this information on the User Profile page, or when hovering over your login name in the Orion header.
Manage users view
A user with administrator rights can manage users one the Manage Users page. This page allows you to view all users, and to create, delete, or update user accounts.
Anonymous read access
The Orion server can now be configured to allow anonymous read access to all files. This makes it easy for you to share links with friends and colleagues, or to interoperate with other tools on the web. See the Server administration guide for further details.
Git projects by default
By default, all projects on Orion are now Git repositories. You can use Git purely as a local history, or use command line tools to push and pull data from your Orion projects to remote Git clones. See the Server administration guide for details on how to enable this feature for your server.
Configurable project layouts
In previous milestones, projects on the Orion server were all stored in a single folder. This layout is fine for a single user, but on a multi-user system this makes it difficult to enforce access control and disk space policies on a per-user basis. The layout of projects on the server can now be configured via the orion.file.layout server configuration propery. See the Server administration guide for further details.