Mozilla Marketplace, which is Mozilla's entrant in the online application store arena, is set to move to a public beta stage in a few weeks, a company official said on Tuesday.

Sencha describes Sencha Architect 2, the latest incarnation of its visual Web development tool, as "a massive upgrade to Ext Designer," the previous version. The name change from Designer to Architect reflects the product's new focus. Instead of a tool for building Web UIs, Sencha says the new version is suitable for creating complete Web applications, both for UI designers and back-end developers. That's true up to a point.

JetBrains has begun shipping version 4.0 of its WebStorm JavaScript IDE, which features backing for the new features in the Harmony version of ECMAScript, the company said.

Microsoft's Visual Studio is more than just an IDE. It's the official developer tool for Microsoft's platform, and new releases tie in with major changes in Windows. Visual Studio 11, now in beta, includes support for the Windows Runtime (WinRT), the engine that powers the new Metro-style, tablet-friendly user interface in Windows 8. As the tool for building Metro apps, Visual Studio 11 plays a critical role in the success or failure of the new Windows.

The Eclipse Foundation for open source development tools is eyeing July as the release date for the 1.0 version of its Orion browser-based IDE for building Web applications, which will be discussed at this week's EclipseCon 2012 conference in Reston, Va.

The story of Node.js reads like it came from a Hollywood script assembly line: Some kids are monkeying around with scrap they picked up around the Internet and find a new way to snap it together. The next thing you know, they're lapping the pack at the racetrack and coasting to the winner's circle.

JetBrains has made a preliminary version of Kotlin, its statically compiled language that compiles to Java Virtual Machine byte code and JavaScript, available via open source, the company said on Tuesday.

Although it is just three years old, Node.js is gaining traction as an application development platform, letting developers extend JavaScript beyond the browser and into servers. But questions remain about JavaScript's appropriateness on servers and developers' readiness to use it.

CoffeeScript, billed by its creator as "unfancy JavaScript," is in development as a language that compiles into JavaScript but offers a different sense of style.