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T
Thomas_Calvin
Inspiring
June 23, 2025
Question

Are people just not using the broken "UXP developer tools?"

  • June 23, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1589 views

I’m writing a plug-in for InDesign, but I keep losing my JS code changes when I close the tool or ID crashes.

But in the editor, the code is marked as dirty when I make changes; and then that’s cleared when I “save” it. But if I look at the JS file on disk (using the dev tool’s “Open folder” command), it doesn’t reflect my changes.

 

There’s no “show in Explorer” option in the context menu in the left pane of the UXP tool, and “Copy link address” doesn’t work; it just copies the filename, not the path. And the “Filesystem” tab is useless: It contains nothing, and the “add folder to workspace” button does nothing.

 

So… are people just using some other tool and still littering their code with alerts to debug?

2 replies

P
Philip Buckley
Participating Frequently
June 26, 2025

Hi,

 

I have posted a reply to your message in the Creative Cloud Developers Forum . . . assuming that it is you using "OscarG" as a username there! 😉

 

Philip

    T
    Thomas_CalvinAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 26, 2025

    Yeah I wish Adobe would consolidate all of its "accounts." Oh well!

    P
    Philip Buckley
    Participating Frequently
    June 24, 2025

    Hi Thomas,

     

    There are two tabs at the top – Developer Workspace and Playground. I've never used the Playground tab, but I use the Developer Workspace tab all the time – to load, watch, and debug the plugins I am developing. I'm creating UXP plugins for InDesign. In my experience the UXP Developer Tools program works fine. I'm wondering how you have things set up and what your expectations of the program are. 

     

    Philip

    T
    Thomas_CalvinAuthor
    Inspiring
    June 24, 2025

    Hi Philip,

    Thanks for the reply. I'm using Developer Workspace also.

    My expectations are to do exactly what you're doing. But the editor is not saving the code, despite claiming to.

    If I edit something and press Save, I expect it to do so.

     

     

    P
    Philip Buckley
    Participating Frequently
    June 24, 2025

    That's odd. My installation does:


    Hi Thomas,

     

    Ah, OK. That's the debugger. To be honest, I didn't know you could edit files there, and it's never occurred to me to even try, so I've no idea whether it's possible or not. I only use that for watching the console log (which I do a lot), and for inspecting the elements of my html (which I do occasionally). I do the actual creation and editing of the files completely outside UXP Developer Tools. Someone else might correct me, but I really don't think that debugger is intended to be used as the actual editor.

     

    I work on a Mac, and I particularly like the code editor called Nova made by a company called Panic, so that's what I personally use as my editor, but you can use whatever editor you like. My files for any given plugin sit in a folder on my hard disk. I open and edit them in Nova.

     

    In UXP Developer Tools I will click "Add Plugin" (top right of the Developer Workspace tab), which pops open the standard file picker, navigate to the folder containing the files of my plugin, select the manifest file, click "OK" (or whatever it is). That is done once to get the plugin into the list. When I am actually working, I will launch InDesign. In UXP Developer Tools I will select the plugin I am working on in the list and click "Load & Watch" (to load it into InDesign) and then click "Debug" to bring up the Debugger.

     

    Then I start editing my code (in Nova). inDesign is runnning, my plugin is loaded, the debugger console is visible. When I make a change to my code and save a file (still in Nova), the UXP Developer Tools reloads the plugin (that's what the "Watch" means in "Load and Watch"), and if I've made a stupid mistake in my code, an error message will pop up in the console telling me the file and line number where the error is. I go fix the error, save the file again, it reloads (now without the error). Rinse and repeat. 

     

    So, files sit in a folder. They are edited in an editor of your choice. The UXP Developer Tools is in the mix to load your plugin (on-the-fly as it were) into inDesign and provide you with a console log. That's it.

     

    Philip

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