Overview

Before Molecule is for official use, let's learn some fundamentals about it, to make sure that you can have a quick start of Molecule.

Extension

Extension is a plug-in technology used by Molecule to realize function customization. With the extension, it's easy to extend core functionalities such as Workbench, ColorTheme, i18n, Settings,Keybinding, QuickAccess.

Workbench

Workbench is the most important part in IDE UI. It contains many components，which includes 6 main modules named MenuBar, ActivityBar, Sidebar, Editor, Panel, and StatusBar in Molecule. Each core module provides a React component and a basic Service object for developers to operate or customize.

ColorTheme

Molecule is compatible with VSCode ColorTheme, and implement a set of extension mechanisms. Use the shortcut combination Command/Ctrl + K to open the theme 'switch panel', or through the 'settings menu', you can see the 'ColorTheme' at the bottom of the menu.

There are kinds of built-in themes in Molecule ,including Dark, Light, Monakai, Github Plus, High Contrast,etc.

i18n

Molecule has a basic Internationalization (i18n) program and supports the extension mechanism. There are three built-in languages ​​by default, Chinese, English and Korean. We can use the shortcut combination Command/Ctrl Shift + L to open the language 「switch panel」, select a language, and then confirm the selection, and then there will be a reminder window in the bottom right corner of the page. Clicking to confirm will reload the current page, and then the locale will be changed.

For more details about the customized locale, please refer to Extended Language Environment.

Settings

Molecule supports modifying some configuration items in Settings. When you want to modify the size of the font in the editor, you only need to open the 'Settings' option in the settings menu, and then change the value of editor.fontSize from 12 to 14.

For more details about the Extended settings, please refer to Extended settings.

Keybinding

Molecule utilizes the powerful Keybinding service of monaco-editor to support customizing various Keybinding in an extended manner. Molecule also has some built-in shortcut keys by default:

• Command/Ctrl + , can quickly access settings;
• Command/Ctrl + Shift + L can quickly switch locale;
• Command/Ctrl + Shift + P can quickly access Command Palette;

For how to Customize Keybinding, please refer to Extended Shortcut Keys.

QuickAccess

QuickAccess is an interactive component of scenes in editor tools such as VSCode and Sublime. We are based on the built-in QuickInputService of monaco-editor and Molecule's extension mechanism, allowing developers to easily implement their own quick access.

For more information on how to customize quick access, please refer to Extended Quick Access to learn how to extend the quick access panel.

Components

Molecule provides many basic React UI Atomic Components such as Menu,TreeView,ContextMenu,etc. At the same time, our Workbench UI is built on the basis of these components. Through these built-in components, we can meet the extension demands of out developers on UI to a greater extend. In addition, Molecule also supports the use of third-party UI component libraries like antd, to meet its own custom requirements.

Currently, we use Storybook to develop and maintain these components. Regarding the use of these components, we can find examples in stories under the source code repository.