Desktop IDE (Dev) installs with strange interface, not sure how to use

General
12

Via

  • Ctrl+Shift+P Particle: Configure Workspace for Device, or
  • by manually editing the [project].code-workspace file like this
    "settings": {
        "particle.targetDevice": "yourDeviceName",
        "particle.firmwareVersion": "0.8.0-rc.27",  # one of the allowed toolchains (not all versions are supported)
        "particle.targetPlatform": "yourPlatform"   # one of [ photon | p1 | electron | argon | boron | xenon ]
    },

Debugging isn't yet officially supported (but planned), but you can build debug firmware via
Ctrl+Shift+B Particle: Compile application for debug (local)
And to setup debugging you could follow this