These words come from the ancient land of September 2016 when it seemed to me that the Intel XDK was quite young ( the wiki says it was launched late 2013 but no one told me).
I found Intel XDK due to an article on CodePage refering to the use of IntelXDK with ThreeJS.
Downloaded and installed following these instructions:intel-xdk-guided-tutorial
Terms and conditions state it is for private and non-commercial use but some asked how they could use it for commercial use and were told just to go ahead...hmm.
On the ide it states to run the app on devices, install Intel App Preview which I did for the Xoom from Google Play store.
From configuring-your-windows-usb-android-debug-connection-for-the-intel-xdk it states that it must have a Intel USB Driver for Android Devices, so, my the Windows 7 machine I was using, I have downloaded this from intel-usb-driver-for-android-devices which gave me IntelAndroidDrvSetup1.10.0.exe. But I think I ended up removing this driver, after updating the android on the tablet and replugging it and then things started to work better and the Intel XDK could now see the android device.
On Lubuntu Linux (Ubuntu is currently too bloated for my old machines), everything seemed to work much smoother. Also the IDE worked much better with a later Android 5.0 (lollipop) tablet.
The IDE Develop tap is a very good code editor, though keystrokes seem to lag sometimes. This may be a internet connection or background program issue.
The IDE emulation tab is quite good for pure HTML code but suffers badly if there is an Cordova plugins. In particular, it could not simulate external storage for the Cordova File plugin, despite several forum articles indicating that it could.
I must revist the Test tab as I had little joy with this.
The Debug tab refused to work on the Windows 7 machine at work - I think the firewall is blocking the port 50000 that is involved. At home on Lubuntu, the debug tab is generally brilliant, though sometimes the console refuses the come up when it should.
To use the debug tab, the android device must be in developer mode
Following Debug tab Android help, I did the 7 times tap on the ProTab building number to become a developer. Then went to setup/developer options and enabled usb debug. I also locked screen from closing. I may have done this before installing the Intel App Preview.
Watching debug-tab-html5-apps-debugging-using-the-intel-xdk was usefull in that it showed that I should be seeing chrome dev tools. I closed all the dev apps on the device and restarted debug tab and all good (– I may have stopped an emulation also.) But the same thing happened again and again I needed to restart the debug after the app was already running. The console still mangaged to miss nearly everything.
I have forgotten what the Profile tab is all about.
The IDE Build tab is not very intuitive. You need to select the platform required by clicking on the top right of the appropriate box and then, for Android, entering a pass key to unlock for this session or for the next 48 hours.
For the required Android certificate I refered to:intel-xdk-certificate-management. I then created a default debug certificate that becomes part of my account and then built the hello cordova project.
The build and download both require an internet connection and both can take a while, with a typical 5 minute wait.
The training videos at intel-xdk-support are useful. I also got a quick response regarding one of the cordova samples from the XDK developers on the forum.
The Terms and conditions state it is for private and non-commercial use but someone asked how they could use it for commercial use and were told just to go ahead...hmm. Certainly the Intel site makes a feature of many of the Intel XDK games that either cost of have in-app-purchases and on game-development-for-mobile-devices-using-html5 has links to guides for commercialisation.
Intel XDK samples can also be found on GitHub including lots of templates and scaffolds not found on the XDK.