DaveJays Blog

Impressions of Coda

MAY 3rd 2007 • 1 Comments

I tried out Coda over the weekend, Panic's new "One Window Web Development" application. And I've got to say, I was blown away. I haven't been this giddy about an application in a long time, I was totally geeked out. It's greatly simplified my workflow and increased my productivity. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to switching between 3 or 4 applications again.

The Sites Gallery

Honestly, my favorite eye candy feature of the program is the "Sites" tab where I can see all the sites I connect to taped up to the wall, ready to be connected to. That's just plain cool.

Remembering Where I Left Off

Also, Coda's ability to remember how I left my set up when I quit the program is really cool. As soon as I connect in to the site I want to work with, I can just pick up where I left off since all the documents and splits I had made are still set up the way I left them. I used to hate restarting for whatever reason because I'd have a large set of BBEdit documents open just the way I wanted them. But It would all be lost as soon as I quit BBEdit.

Syntax Coloring

Coda also has slightly better markup coloring than BBEdit I think. For instance, if I echo a block of HTML and have a variable included in the string, it colors the variable in the string a slightly darker shade. So now my variables aren't hidden in the echo statement. I can see them clearly.

Open/Close Tag Highlighting

Another feature that really caught me off guard is the little blue circle that highlights either the open or close character in my PHP as I put my text cursor over either one. It makes it that much easier to determine where the beginning and end of statements are. It's especcially useful when you have multiple statements all nested within each other. If the statements aren't properly indented, it can be easy to lose track of where statements start, and where they end.

Publishing

And finally the coolest feature is the ability to publish any changes I make to the server by simply clicking the up arrow next to a file, or by clicking "Publish All". It can't get any easier than that! I remember when iWeb came out I wished that publishing changes was that easy with BBEdit and Transmit. However, I have noticed a bug: If I make changes in multiple documents and then publish just one of them, but not the others. I lose the ability to publish the changes I made in the others. Even "Publish All" forgets which documents had changes.

Conclusions

Overall I think Coda rocks, and I can't wait to see how this application is developed further throughout the years. It's the best version 1 program I've ever seen, honestly I can't think of anything else they could do to make it better. It's power is in its simplicity. Perhaps with further use I'll be able to find some problems with it.

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