Google unveils Project IDX: AI-powered browser-based development environment

Google has announced the launch of 'Project IDX' -- an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled browser-based development environment for building full-stack web and multiplatform applications. The project currently supports frameworks, such as Angular, Flutter, Next.js, React, Svelte and Vue, and languages like JavaScript and Dart, with support for Python, Go, and others in the works, according to TechCrunch.

Instead of creating a new integrated development environment (IDE), Google has built Project IDX on the open-source platform Visual Studio Code that allowed the team to focus on the integration with Codey, Google’s PaLM 2–based foundation model for programming tasks.

Due to Codey, IDX supports smart code completion, a ChatGPT/Bard-like chatbot that can help developers with general coding questions as well as those related specifically to the code they are working on (including the ability to explain it) and the ability to add contextual code actions like "add comments", according to the report.

Google introduces Project IDX, an AI-enhanced browser development platform

“We spend a lot of time writing code, and recent advances in AI have created big opportunities to make that time more productive,” the IDX team was quoted as saying.

“With Project IDX, we’re exploring how Google’s innovations in AI, including the Codey and PaLM 2 models powering Studio Bot in Android Studio, Duet in Google Cloud and more, can help you not only write code faster, but also write higher-quality code,” it added.

Project IDX, as a cloud-based IDE, integrates with Google's Firebase Hosting and Google Cloud Functions.

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Developers can access a Linux-based virtual machine (VM) within each workspace and import existing code from GitHub repositories.

Google also intends to include embedded Android and iOS simulators directly in the browser, the report said.

Meanwhile, Google has added a grammar check feature to its search engine 'Google Search'. According to the company, its grammar checker will see “if a phrase or sentence is written in a grammatically correct way or how to correct it, if not".

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