I’ve always dreamed of opening VS Code in my browser. That would really help me,since, out of my workplace, I’m usually using my tablet or mobile phone and so having a hard time reviewing/writing code just because I’m not sitting behind my laptop.

If contributed on the project, or tried to build and run it from the source code, you’ve probably seen VS Code’s intrinsic capability to run in a browser. Other than that, people would basically expect Electron based applications, like VS Code, natively run in a Chromium/Chrome instance. Some third-party services, like StackBlitz or Gitpod are providing this feature for free. There are open source repositories as well; among them cdr/code-server and gitpod-io/open vscode-server. But an official host was still missing, especially because of unavailability of VS Code’s rich extension marketplace for non-Microsoft builds, like these third-party altrnatives.

Now, things have changed. Just open vscode.dev to see the officially hosted version of VS Code; lightweight but quite promising, functional and consistent with the desktop version.

Also, make sure to check the blog post to get familiar with the new cool shortcuts that accelerate your development in the new environment.

About Regular Encounters

I’ve decided to record my daily encounters with professional issues on a somewhat regular basis. Not all of them are equally important/unique/intricate, but are indeed practical, real, and of course, textually minimal.