About ASIDE.IO
About
ASIDE.IO is A Salesforce IDE that is fast, free, and always available. It is full-featured and supports the entire Salesforce development cycle from writing code, to running unit tests, querying/managing data, and deploying the resulting application.
There is no download required to start using ASIDE.IO, it lives in the cloud and is happy to be up there. Having Salesforce development tools in the cloud is a natural extension of the code and compiler being stored there. Eliminating a dependency on local workspaces of code already stored in the cloud reduces save conflicts and lost code because you are working against the source and not a copy of it.
ASIDE.IO is not the product of a company; it has been designed, developed, and maintained solely by me, Phil Rymek (Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub), as my hobby project over the course of many years. I sincerely hope you like it and thank you for using it.
There is no download required to start using ASIDE.IO, it lives in the cloud and is happy to be up there. Having Salesforce development tools in the cloud is a natural extension of the code and compiler being stored there. Eliminating a dependency on local workspaces of code already stored in the cloud reduces save conflicts and lost code because you are working against the source and not a copy of it.
ASIDE.IO is not the product of a company; it has been designed, developed, and maintained solely by me, Phil Rymek (Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub), as my hobby project over the course of many years. I sincerely hope you like it and thank you for using it.
History
Created in early 2012, ASIDE.IO started off as a simple experiment. I wanted to know if you could execute Apex code from Apex code, similar to JavaScript’s eval function. After a bit of research I found out it was possible by calling Force.com APIs to execute anonymous from Apex code.
From here the next logical step for me was to throw a UI on top of my shiny new Apex eval function. It didn’t take long for me to find the amazing ACE Editor and hook it up to the code I had written. While crude, the result was exciting, and invigorated me to see what else I could create. From here d3v (pronounced “dev”, as in “developer”) was born, a Visualforce page that had some basic functionality to aid me in my daily tasks.
As d3v gained more functionality, I had a blast using and building it, but wanted to open it up to a larger audience. At this point Salesforce had acquired Heroku so it seemed like the logical place for me to host d3v. From here there was a long transition process as I ported d3v over to Heroku, translated an Apex backend into Ruby, and opened d3v up to the public.
Even as d3v became more capable, there weren’t many people using it. At that point it performed well, but was ugly and had a stupid name. In an attempt to get more users and right these wrongs, many changes were made: d3v was given a new interface, many bugs were fixed, and it was relaunched as ASIDE.IO in February 2014.
The rebranding was successful – on day 1 more people used ASIDE.IO than had ever used d3v. Over time ASIDE.IO has continued to gain more popularity and functionality, and turned into the full-featured Salesforce development tool that it is today.
From here the next logical step for me was to throw a UI on top of my shiny new Apex eval function. It didn’t take long for me to find the amazing ACE Editor and hook it up to the code I had written. While crude, the result was exciting, and invigorated me to see what else I could create. From here d3v (pronounced “dev”, as in “developer”) was born, a Visualforce page that had some basic functionality to aid me in my daily tasks.
As d3v gained more functionality, I had a blast using and building it, but wanted to open it up to a larger audience. At this point Salesforce had acquired Heroku so it seemed like the logical place for me to host d3v. From here there was a long transition process as I ported d3v over to Heroku, translated an Apex backend into Ruby, and opened d3v up to the public.
Even as d3v became more capable, there weren’t many people using it. At that point it performed well, but was ugly and had a stupid name. In an attempt to get more users and right these wrongs, many changes were made: d3v was given a new interface, many bugs were fixed, and it was relaunched as ASIDE.IO in February 2014.
The rebranding was successful – on day 1 more people used ASIDE.IO than had ever used d3v. Over time ASIDE.IO has continued to gain more popularity and functionality, and turned into the full-featured Salesforce development tool that it is today.
Contact
If you are encountering any issues with ASIDE.IO, have bug/feature requests, or have any other questions/comments, email me at admin@aside.io.