TIL VS Code Has a Builtin Web Browser

Published March 31, 2024

At this month’s JavaScriptMN virtual meetup, I learned that VS Code has a builtin web browser called Simple Browser. This probably should be a bit of a “duh!” moment because VS Code itself is built with Electron, so the entire app is really a web browser, I just didn’t expect that they exposed that directly.

To try it out, fire up the command pallette with Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + P and search for Simple Browser. It’s that simple. 😉

The use-case for this is similar to using the builtin terminal: you want to switch between screens/windows less, perhaps when sharing your screen for a demo or doing pair programming. This isn’t something that I would expect to use all the time, but it’s a handy tool to have in the toolbox.

Also at JSMN: Shalanah Dawson showed off her recent iOS404 project which sheds light on just how far behind iOS Safari is when compared to competing browsers. This shouldn’t be surprising, given the recent PWA debacle.

Last modified March 28, 2024  #til   #dev   #productivity   #dx