TrialTool is a web based application that illustrates the capabilities of various Javascript APIs. It is like an API playground that lets you view, modify and run examples and see the output right inside the browser.
A few days back, Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview that would give developers a peek into the next version of the operating system and to start developing applications.
HTML, CSS and Javascript was one of the ways to build Windows 8 native applications. The list of APIs in the reference was huge and I wanted a way to not just read but also play around with the APIs to understand and experience them. To this end, I ported the web version of TrialTool to illustrate the various Windows 8 APIs available.
The video below is a screencast of how TrialTool looks like, on Windows 8 Developer Preview.
As show in the video above, you can browse through various sets of examples. You can click on an individual example, view the corresponding code, modify it and run it inline.
TrialTool is also integrated with Windows Search. You can hit "Windows Key" + F to bring up the search panel, type in the name of the API to search and select TrialTool from the list of applications to directly navigate to the API you are interested in.
TrialTool is also a Windows 8 Share Target. While reading MSDN documentation or looking at code sent over email or IMs, you can select the code, bring up the Start menu (usually at bottom left) and click Share. You can select TrialTool from the list of listed applications. The selected code is shown in a "code cache". You can select and add more code to the code cache and see how the snippets work. With this capability, not only can you just read documentation, you can actually see how the API works.
The project and the source code are available on codeplex. If you have an installation of Windows 8, simply download the zip file and run the bat file with Administrator privileges.
As seen in the video above, not all APIs are shown yet; I am working to make more APIs available. I am also working on adding features like syntax coloring and a better search, etc for this version of TrialTool for Windows 8.
If you are interested in helping out, please contact me.
