Panic releases Coda

Panic, the makers of Transmit, Unison and Candybar, have released a new application called Coda. Coda is a development environment primarily aimed at web developers. Coda is packed with features, including site management, FTP, code editing with code completion, CSS editing, collaborative editing, built in Terminal shell, and integrated reference materials. But even that exhaustive list doesn’t begin to describe the fit and finish that is present in this new application.

Let’s take a look at how Coda can handle your day to day development needs.

Upon launching Coda you’ll see the base interface. On the left hand side, you have a local/remote view of your files. In your toolbar, you have icons for Sites, Edit mode, Preview mode, CSS mode, Terminal mode, and Books.

Sites

Clicking on the Sites icon will present you with a list of all your sites. If this is the first time you have launched Coda, you will be presented with the option of importing your favorites from Transmit, if you have any. If not, you can enter them manually.

Each site is represented by a taped-up blank sheet of paper, that will (when your information has been entered), display an image from your sites home page. If your site doesn’t have a home page, you can manually specify an image to be used.

Once you have entered your Site information, double clicking on the Site icon will launch that site for editing. Coda can edit files locally or remotely. If you have specified both local and remote locations, Coda will track your changes locally and allow you to publish them to the remote server one by one, or all at a time.

Editing

At the heart of Coda is a quality code editor. Coda comes complete with the ability to syntax highlight CSS, HTML, Java, Javascript, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, SQL and XML. Additionally, you can specify additional file types to adopt syntax highlighting following any of the aforementioned languages rules.

The code editor also allows you to enable/disable code completion, or trigger code completion with either a short delay or the F5/Esc key.

In addition to code completion, Coda features Hints that can be turned on during editing. Hints display on the bottom of the screen and are context sensitive. Some hints will display a “More” button, which when clicked, will access the built in reference materials (more on that later), and display topics that are related to the code you were working on.

The code editor also features a blockedit mode. Simply highlight a chunk of code, select “Blockedit selection”, and you can then type on one line of the block, and that change will be applied to all of the lines in the block. This is extremely useful for quickly commenting out a large chunk of code.

Most developers have a library of their own code snippets that they use day in/day out. Coda allows users to import code snippets and access them globally (for all sites), or just for a particular site. Coda calls these “Clips”, and they are accessible through a floating palette, or from the bottom of the editor.

For developers who edit CSS code, Coda has two options. You can edit CSS in standard text edit mode, or you can edit in CSS mode. CSS mode gives you a semi-graphical view of your classes, and allows you to select either a list view of your class properties, or a visual view of your properties. If you have ever used CSSEdit, this view will be very familiar to you.

Coda’s main window allows many documents to be open in tabs. However, the real power of Coda is seen in its ability to split any window in to multiple views, either horizontally or vertically. This allows you to have your CSS code in text view on one side (or on the top), and have the graphic view on the other side (or on the bottom). You can mix these split views up with the other tools as well. For example, you can have your HTML code in one window, split the view, and then have a preview of that page in the other view. While other editors like Dreamweaver and GoLive have long featured the ability to have split views, Coda takes it to the next level by letting your decide which manner you use to split your views. Every editor prefers a different setup for editing/previewing their files, and Coda accommodates them in a way no other application has to date.

Collaboration

One of the nifty features of Coda is code collaboration via BonJour. You can share a document with another person on your network. As the shared document is edited, the changes are displayed in your copy (and vice-versa if you edit the document) and highlighted. If you are a fan of SubEthaEdit, this is a big deal for you.

Summary

Coda is probably the most feature complete 1.0 product I have seen from a Mac developer outside of Apple or Adobe. The attention to detail is impressive, and the app is a joy to use. Of course, a 1.0 doesn’t always feature everything you need. Coda is no exception. So, without

Category: Software