- Published on
Why I fell in love with VS Code’s Live Share and why you should too
- Authors
- Name
- interglobalmedia
- @letsbsocial1
Last night I introduced Live Share
to my class I am teaching online. Because we are not physically in the same room, but perhaps we want to collaborate on code
within the same editor (which is not even possible if we are in the same physical location anyway), we can connect with each other via VS Code
’s Live Share
extension.
My students were able to go into my slide deck
for the class and edit it in real time
. Then they saved the changes, and I then subsequently made necessary updates to reflect those changes. It increased their attention
and also their engagement
. We all had a certain learning curve we had to overcome, but this after all was the first time we had used it for the class. I believe it is a fantastic tool to use, and students (or team members at work) can check out code
, make changes to test in real time
, and also have the ability to view the impact of those changes immediately via the Live Share
“Shared Server”
feature. Either one can use VS Code
’s Live Server
extension and share the URL
that appears in the browser
when the project
opens up as a result of clicking on the “Go Live”
tab at the bottom of the active VS Code
window instance, or one can even use the port
used by npm packages
like nodemon
in order to view the project
in question
in a local server
instance. Physical location is no longer important
or relevant
when collaborating on projects. It can all be done from all over the place with tools
such as Live Share. This is great in our era of
remote/hybrid learningor
work. I ***am in***
100%`.
There is also a chat area
that is initialized within the VS Code
collaborative session instance
where students or team members can share their thoughts or ideas in real time
.
And if on throws in something like Zoom
or Google Meet
(in our case, it is Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
for student learning online), one can add audio/visual
features. This way, collaborators
can actually speak with each other and also share their screens if necessary. Live Share
does not include audio
, and the Live Share
extension pack does not work, because the audio feature
breaks it. The audio feature
is blocked by browsers
for security reasons
. When it first came out 3
years ago, Live Share
’s audio feature
did work, but the quality
was not great. With the advent of Zoom
, Google Meet
, and other like tools, it really doesn’t matter anyway.
I highly encourage trying out VS Code
’s Live Share
. It works like a charm! Also read my article
entitled Successfully Using Live Share Extension in VS Code, which takes you through the steps of getting set up
with VS Code Live Share
. After this setup process
, you will be ready for live code collaboration
with your team members
or fellow students
in real time. Physical location
is no longer an issue! However, you can still use this handy tool
if you ARE in the same physical location
, because without it, you still would not be able to collaborate within a common text editor instance
!