I like to close unwanted views and combine three of my mostly used View into ones dock to the left side of the IDE namely, File, Project and Snippets.

Let’s move on, we will then need to create our own set of snippets – be it JS script, XML, HTML, CSS or whatever you are programming with this IDE.

First, create a new default web project. For this tutorial – I’m going guide you all in writing your first Javascript Alerter with user input support. Name the project Aptana Snippets. Proceed by creating snippets folder inside this project.

Now, inside the snippets folder add an empty js file. Let’s called it myMsgBox.js

DELETE everything including remarks statement generated by Aptana in myMsgBox.js

Type in the javascript like below for example.

/*
	category: Titoonic
	name: My Message Box
	toolbar: true
	language: text/javascript
	toolTip: My Message Box
	prompt(msg): Message
 
*/
alert("{$msg}");

Notice, the remarks are very context specific – which means you have to make sure you follow Aptana IDE snippet remark syntax to bind them to snippet view. Category : means the folder that will appear in Snippets View. You should create your own Category because, there’s a lot of snippets categories in there already – best to start one your own to avoid confusion.

Notice there’s also prompt(variablename): Title, by inserting this – you can assign variables to the actual snippet with {$variablename}. In our case {$msg} was our variable name. You can add more than one variable name by adding more prompt{variablename} : Title and matching it with the codes.

Once, you save – Aptana will create a reference based on your remark statement and update the Snippet view. Please make sure no space are above the remark statement – else it will not work.

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Here are my settings but, it does that few hours for your eyes to get accustomed with the sudden switch of light to dark theme. Is just like driving in heavy rain using sun glasses. Then again, you can always revert to default settings if you don’t like it.

Settings

Font Used (Windows) : Consolas
Font Size : 11 
Foreground : #FFFFFF
Background : #333333
Identifiers : #0066CC
Keywords : #FF3399
Comments : #808080
Strings : #99CC00

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 A dark theme looks like a classical o/s prompt command or linux terminal. I found a wonderful color customization from Boris Popoff that day, regarding the customization of color template for dark theme for Aptana IDE. After using Aptana IDE for quite some time, I find dark theme suits my vision better, cause I always thinks that white background on the lcd monitor can be way too bright. Well that’s just my field of vision.

For those who are new to Aptana IDE – Free javascript IDE can read my review here

The font used for this is MS-Consolas. When tweaked your IDE will look like the picture above.

To download this color customization template for Aptana IDE check out http://gueschla.com/labs/green-chaud/.

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