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Inspiring
June 23, 2025
Question

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

  • June 23, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1599 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

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

Inspiring
June 26, 2025

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

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

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.

 

 

Inspiring
June 25, 2025

Are you aware of today's Developers Live event?

Beyond that, UDT also has a dedicated category in the separate Creative Cloud Developer forum, which also has an InDesign specific category (mostly covering InDesign UXP).

 


Huh, nope! Would've been potentially nice to know about... although the schedule seems to be heavy with "AI"-related junk.

 

I did find that developer forum, thanks, and had posted a question there days ago. That forum is dead. The posts are mostly ancient, and I got zero replies. Just another waste of time that ought to be taken down and consolidated with this one.