JavaScript and Web sandboxes

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In case you hadn’t noticed, I use JsFiddle for most of JavaScript demos and to embed samples into my blog. I like JsFiddle, but it does have a few annoyances.

As a result, I started looking at some alternates.


The main problem that I have started to find annoying with JsFiddle is that it obfuscates some things like accessing tags in your HTML and reference external files is cumbersome.

The two alternatives that I started looking at, and using, are Plunker and Codepen. Both of these sandboxes, from my cursory inspection, are less limiting than JsFiddle.

With both Codepen and Plunker, I you are given a basic structure and can easily drop in full HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Since you have full control of your HTML, any external references can simply be put into the tag of your HTML. This makes pulling demo source code that I’ve created and uploaded to my git repositories a breeze.

Other things that Codepen and Plunker support that JsFiddle do not are tags, downloading of source, real-time preview, and more. Codepen/Plunker also seem like more of a community. With tagging and tracking of views, Codepen and Plunker fit my desired use cases a bit better.

The only negative I have found is that Plunker does not support https. This that I cannot embed plunks directly into my blog since my blog uses https. Doh!

For now, I’m still bouncing between Codepen and Plunker to determine which I like best, but one thing is for certain. I think both offer a more robust feature set than JsFiddle.

Here are links to my Codepen and Plunker profiles:

Codepen
Plunker

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