BiT FAQ
Rafael Jannone (rafael AT jannone DOT org)
Table of Contents:
- What's BiT?
- BiT features
- Supported browsers
- Filesystem access and security issues
- Enabling file access for online use
What's BiT?
BiT is a Z80 ASM Editor and Assembler.
It helps you to edit your code, presenting real-time information about labels, instructions, execution time, and so on.
BiT is written entirelly in Javascript. It's NOT Java.
BiT features
Here's a quick list:
- Automatic indentation and code completion
- Assemble code in .BIN format
- Instruction table updated as you type, showing all instruction variants/sizes/clocks
- Label indexing and shortcutting: jump directly to your labels from anywhere
- Label reference: document your labels and see their parameters in real-time
- Previews: select a block of code and see the resulting bytes + clock information
- Block indentation: select a block and press TAB, or Shift+TAB
More to come...
Supported Browsers
Only Firefox 1.5+ is supported at this time.
BiT is an open source project. You can help to port it to other platforms.
Filesystem access and security issues
Firefox allows local file access for reading/writing, when granted by the user.
This is a very important detail. Since BiT uses this feature to load and save ASM files on your hard-drive, you'll only be able to that if you grant access.
Tipically, if you download BiT and run locally, the browser will ask your permission when executing a file operation.
When running BiT online, however, you'll need to set an extra configuration key.
Sounds confusing but it is actually quite simple. Read onto the next section.
Enabling file access for online use
Follow these simple steps:
- Open Firefox
- In the URL box, enter about:config
- Locate the key signed.applets.codebase_principal_support
- Set this key's value to true
- Done!
This allows online apps to have file access. Firefox will still ask your permission at each file operation.
So as long as you only grant access to legitimate apps, there's nothing to worry about.