The news about releasing the Ethereum Studio developer environment was today published on the Ethereum blog. How does look like the new IDE and can it compete with popular RemixIDE? Let’s take a look on the new tool and check what it offers.

First impression

You can find the Ethereum Studio IDE here: https://studio.ethereum.org/

After opening the link in the browser the view of creation the new project appears. There are 3 example projects predefined: Hello World, Coin and CryptoPizza NFT. You can also create fresh, empty project. For the test I will choose the template with most interesting name: CryptoPizza. Such view appears:

ethereum-studio-ide
CryptoPizza NFT template project in Ethereum Studio.

It looks solid. The screen is split on the editing part and the web page rendering part (client side of the dapps). You can find here everything is needed for editing the source code (edition, saving, changing names, etc.). What I’ve noticed however – modification of the web page source code doesn’t rerender the view – it means that the reload button must be clicked in order to see the result of changes. I think it will be changed in the future, for long term development it might be annoying.

Running a CryptoPizza

The IDE allows to compile the smart contract and deploying it to the network – blockchain network in the browser (I suppose it’s less than that). We don’t speak here yet about interaction with real Ethereum blockchain networks, not Mainnet and not event testnet. Remix IDE has the similar browser blockchain feature but also supports real blockchain networks.

At the beginning in the Ethereum Studio we have already prepared 2 accounts, both with 100 Ether each. Blockchain in browser – it means there is no integration with Metamask yet.

Project compiles well (using Solidity 0.5.1 compiler, unfortunately I cannot find the possibility to change the version what is also possible in Remix). After compilation the contract can be “deployed to the network”.

crypto-pizza-uploaded
Contract deployed to the simulation of blockchain network in browser.

After uploading the contract we can interact with it. There 2 options: using the web page UI – so just creating the crypto pizza with button or using the window which gives the possibility to interact directly with contract (invoking the functions).

Example project works well. I can play with that without any problems. It’s my CRYPTO PIZZA:

crypto-pizza-interaction
Przemek’s Pizza created.

Downloading the content of the project is currently impossible. Even if there is button in the IDE for this operation – the message says that it’s not supported yet. It looks like some work has to be done yet for making the IDE fully useful.

Summary

Ethereum Studio IDE makes good impression. It’s modern and almost fully featured. Some important features are missing yet, but it’s still early version. I don’t think that the intention of that project is replacement of popular Remix IDE, which currently is still better than Ethereum Studio. I think it’s nice to have more than once choice. I’m pretty sure that both of IDE will coexist together.

Have you checked the new IDE? How do you like it? Did you find some cool features?
Let me know in the comments – Przemek.