Repl.it Redesigned the Mobile Experience

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On smartphones, now the focused REPL pane takes up most of the screen. The redesign takes advantage of native mobile design patterns and lets you switch to a different pane from the bottom navigation bar. There are panes for the code editor, the console, and the output.

Python REPL in Repl.it on a Pixel 2 XL phone
A Python REPL in Repl.it on my Pixel 2 XL phone.

Tapping the code in the editor brings up a contextual menu with some options of the desktop version. You can select, search, or paste text, or open the full command palette.

On my Pixel 2 XL phone in Chrome, lines with up to 42 characters fit in the editor’s width. The editor wraps longer lines. But most of the code usually keeps the original indentation and its structure is still clear at a glance. The console pane wraps text, too, so no horizontal scrolling is required.

You can get an idea of what Repl.it looks like on mobile by opening the browser on your device and visiting a Python REPL I set up for testing the mobile interface.  It’s an instance of Repl.it’s Multi-Page-Flask-Template, a Flask app that generates pages based on the slug entered as input.

Repl.it is a multi-language development environment in the cloud. It supports dozens of programming languages and frameworks. It’s my favorite IDE as it works fully in the cloud. This is a killer feature for a Chrome OS enthusiast like me.

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