After word processors, mockup designer and mind mapping tool, it's the time of code editors: yesterday the Mozilla Labs announced Bespin, a online web-based collaborative code editor.

It's still a very early alpha release, so many things are still missing and are waiting to be implemented. The high level features of Bespin are:

• Ease of use
• Real-time collaboration
• Integrated command line
• Extensible
• Fast and responsive
• Accessible from anywhere

At the moment the collaboration and the extensibility are yet to be implemented, but all the rest is already there. I was really impressed by how fast and responsive is the editing window, even with very big files. To make this possible they said they rewrote everything using the canvas object instead of relying on textboxes or the other editing API. And, as frosting on the cake, they have a very cool dark color schema.

If you want to know more, make sure you read the official announcement, the project site, watch the video presentation, and then try it out by yourself.

Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.