Sandbox

Test your snippets of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS!

Easily, instantly, and all within your familiar VS Code environment.

Features

Live Code Playground

Prototype, play, and experiment with your web development ideas. No setup required.

1. Create your sandbox with the command:

   • Sandbox: New Sandbox

2. Start coding in the provided text editors.

3. As you type, the results update in the live preview.

• Need to manually reload? VS Code has a command for us.

  • Developer: Reload Webviews

• Want to debug something? VS Code has that built-in.

  • Developer: Open Webview Developer Tools

Save Your Work

In the Explorer view, you can use the "Download" context option to save files, or the sandbox itself as a folder.

Additional Commands

Sandbox: Reopen Editors

• Accidentally close an editor or move the editor grid around? You can restore the editors back to normal with this command.

Sandbox: Close Sandbox

• The sandbox can be closed and removed from your workspace with this command.

Known Issues

Using the VS Code provided Webview Developer Tools has some quirks. The details are documented here.

• Elements: Your sandbox DOM is contained in the "active-frame" iframe element.
• Console: To evaluate code in your sandbox, switch to the "active-frame" option using the top-left dropdown. It's set to "top" initially.
• Sources: For convenience, the script with your JS code is mapped as script.js in the file tree and in the "Open file" selector.

In the Explorer view, using the "Download" context menu item on the workspace folder causes the Windows File save dialog to open instead of a Folder save dialog.

• This incorrectly saves the folder with a default ".txt" extension.
• The download still succeeds, but it will likely append the extension to the folder name.

Release Notes

1.0.0

Initial release of Sandbox!

1.0.1

Change default styles to not conflict with user's body background styling.