I would like to announce a new way in which you can try new features with the Intel® XDK without perturbing the stability and productivity that you enjoy with it – the Intel® XDK Early Access!
The Intel XDK Early Access is a separate product and download from the Intel XDK, but one in which we will offer new features for you to try, and of course for you to offer feedback to help us improve them. We intend for the Intel XDK Early Access to be fully functional and tested, but since it will have experimental features, you should expect some instability or oddity in its use relative to the Intel XDK. Thus, if you are in a crunch to get your app out the door and don’t want to try something new, or be forced to learn some new UI, you can stick with the Intel XDK. The one stipulation for using the Intel XDK Early Access is that we want you to provide us feedback on the new features, so you do have to opt-in for follow-up communication - you will see that the first time you login to the Intel XDK Early Access.
The difference in this Intel XDK Early Access release from the Intel XDK is with new features for the management and testing of Apache* Cordova* plugins.
In the Intel XDK we have been getting the Cordova plugins from github or wherever you specified at build time. Now, we can fetch them right as you specify the plugins in the plugins settings UI so that they are in your project directories prior to app builds. This allows us to add intellisense and other common editor help for the plugins APIs in the future. The other thing this does is allow us to build your app with the plugins for testing and debugging on device. Cordova plugins offer great ways to add more native and unique functionality to apps, but they definitely make some aspects of testing and debugging on device harder. We solved that by essentially doing a build of your project to allow App Preview to load it for testing and debugging.
Adding plugin fetching and previewing did cause us to make a number of changes to the project and plugins settings UI, as well as to the debug and testing tabs - it was a substantial change to the core of the product. That’s why we decided to start the Intel XDK Early Access – we want to get some added testing and feedback before moving it to the Intel XDK product.
A couple of other caveats with the Intel XDK Early Access:
- It can be installed side-by-side with the Intel XDK, but you cannot have both running at the same time
- With this release of the Intel XDK Early Access, you will not be able to share projects between the two XDKs. The Intel XDK Early Access' Cordova project information had to change significantly, hence when you open an existing project, the Intel XDK Early Access will “upgrade” it. When this happens, you will no longer be able to open that project in the Intel XDK. Thus, we highly recommend that you create a copy of your Intel XDK project files before opening them in the Intel XDK Early Access. The Intel XDK Early Access will warn you about this as well before it upgrades the project.
We intend to keep the Intel XDK Early Access updated with important bug-fixes just as we do the Intel XDK, and expect to add new “big” features that need experimentation and feedback on about the same frequency as we have been. We won't migrate those features to the Intel XDK product until we're confident that they have been sufficiently vetted by your feedback and our further testing, though.
One final note regarding the Intel XDK Early Access. We have said previously that we have deprecated the "Legacy" build targets and intend to discontinue them once we have Cordova versions. As we make changes to the Build UI and build systems going forward, we won't be updating these legacy targets in the Intel XDK Early Access. Only the Intel XDK product will have the legacy builders supported until we finally have all Cordova implementations done.
Here is a link to the Intel XDK Early Access Release Notes.
Here is the link to the Intel XDK Early Access download site. It is linked from the main Intel XDK page as well.
So, enjoy, and please give us feedback. There is a User Forum topic specifically for the Intel XDK Early Access, so fill it up!
The Intel® XDK Team
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