Coda2

Dreamweaver is like a tanker

Coda is like a speed boat.


I think Coda will be great for those developers that need a smaller and more nimble suite of tools.

Though if your scope is wide Dreamweaver is likely going to support more languages.

Coda 2 should be faster and have a better UI than Dreamweaver. You will also get on Thursday through the mac store for a tenth of Dreamweaver's price. I personally think its feature set is better than Dreamweaver and rivals or beats Espresso!

The new updates to Coda actually make it a really good deal. It includes reference materials, Transmit (which is like $50), and MySQL editor all for free.

I've been using CODA 1 for a long time and I'm really looking forward to CODA 2. I have tried to use Dreamweaver and it is powerful. But it is a lot more complicated to use because of the thousands of options.

Setting up "sites" in CODA so I could browse web files locally and on a ftp takes minutes...doing something similar in Dreamweaver is a lot more convoluted.

I think CODA has a free 30 day trial, you should give it a try...

I use Coda and I love it, especially as a beginner it is a great tool. Destroys Dreamweaver, RapidWeaver and Espresso in my opinion.

My god people are actually comparing Dreamweaver and Coda.

Dreamweaver should only be used by people who don't know how to write html/js/css. It writes awful and complex javascript, it's css output is incredibly inefficient and indecipherable, and it's html is, well it's html isn't bad, but it's hard to screw up html too badly. The app is bloated (as most adobe/ former macromedia apps are). Its WYSIWYG viewer is not all that accurate. I honestly can't imagine how much you'd have to pay me to switch to Dreamweaver as my primary development tool.

Coda is my primary code app, but it has it's problems. The code hinting isn't perfect, and for some reason it can't search within as3 files. I could go on, but suffice to say it's my first choice for php/html/js/css development, and I have licenses for Espresso, TextMate, Dreamwrecker, and a few other code apps too.

For what it's worth, my dev cycle is to work locally, using the publish function in Coda to constantly be FTPing the files up to a staging server (or a staging folder on the live server) and testing it in Chrome. I'm past the point of needing live local WYSIWYG testing, but the edit->upload->test->edit loop with Coda's publish and a quick command+R in Chrome takes less than 3 seconds, so it's close enough.

I also write Actionscript 3 in TextMate and UnityScript in MonoDevelop, but I love my Coda for web languages.

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Penny's Geek said:

What's the learning curve in terms of using the interface? Somewhat like DW or is it more intuitive? Could you describe it perhaps as a DW lite version or are we talking a completely different user experience?

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Coda has about 12 buttons in it's interface, and that's really all it needs... does that help?

Penny's Geek said:

What's the learning curve in terms of using the interface? Somewhat like DW or is it more intuitive? Could you describe it perhaps as a DW lite version or are we talking a completely different user experience?

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There is almost no learning curve and it is very straightforward and intuitive. Dreamweaver feels complicated to me and somewhat confusing. You can pick up on most of Coda's features right away.

That being said, Coda was designed for different types of web developers than Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver integrates with other Adobe apps and services as well as having a WYSIWYG editor. Coda is mostly a code editor with other tools such as FTP, Preview, etc. added on. Coda 2 definitely has a lot of features that Dreamweaver doesn't have but Dreamweaver works with a lot of plug-ins and has a lot of support for cross-browser compatibility.

The biggest difference between the two is UI, speed, and price. Coda has a more intuitive UI and is generally better looking than Dreamweaver. Coda is also faster and uses less RAM. The biggest difference is that Coda 2 is $50 dollars on Thursday while Dreamweaver is $500+.

Could you give me more info on your web design/ development experience?

does coda have a feature like DW's library items? It's a fragment of code that is standalone and you can place on multiple pages. You change the library item and then all the pages that use it are updated.

I've used Coda for a few years and found it to be very good. lately though, it has been getting long in the tooth compared with apps like sublime text 2. After looking at the new feature set, I just might stay with Coda. I especially like the Git support, that will be very handy indeed.

chaos86 said:

My god people are actually comparing Dreamweaver and Coda.

Dreamweaver should only be used by people who don't know how to write html/js/css. It writes awful and complex javascript, it's css output is incredibly inefficient and indecipherable, and it's html is, well it's html isn't bad, but it's hard to screw up html too badly. The app is bloated (as most adobe/ former macromedia apps are). Its WYSIWYG viewer is not all that accurate. I honestly can't imagine how much you'd have to pay me to switch to Dreamweaver as my primary development tool.

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Hear, hear! As far as I'm concerned, Dreamweaver has not been an appropriate development tool for professional/conscientious web development at the very least during this current millennium, and I would go as far to say ever.

Coda is my primary code app, but it has it's problems. The code hinting isn't perfect, and for some reason it can't search within as3 files. I could go on, but suffice to say it's my first choice for php/html/js/css development, and I have licenses for Espresso, TextMate, Dreamwrecker, and a few other code apps too.

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I am planning to purchase Coda 2 on its release tomorrow (or on Friday, as the UK MAS refresh always seems to be Thursday evening), as I like Panic! as a studio and am hoping to be impressed by the iCloud sync. I've used the trials of both Coda and Espresso, and wasn't able to use either often enough during the trial to really work out what separated the two. Would you mind (however briefly) setting out why you think Coda superior to Espresso?

For what it's worth, my dev cycle is to work locally, using the publish function in Coda to constantly be FTPing the files up to a staging server (or a staging folder on the live server) and testing it in Chrome. I'm past the point of needing live local WYSIWYG testing, but the edit->upload->test->edit loop with Coda's publish and a quick command+R in Chrome takes less than 3 seconds, so it's close enough.

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Out of interest, have you ever tried an app called LiveReload? It basically automatically refreshes a browser window each time local or remote content is updated, and unless I've misunderstood your description, it could possibly add an extra drop of oil to your work-flow.

Penny's Geek said:

What's the learning curve in terms of using the interface? Somewhat like DW or is it more intuitive? Could you describe it perhaps as a DW lite version or are we talking a completely different user experience?

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Do you know HTML and CSS?

If not, then Coda2 is not for you, as someone else pointed out.

I'll be getting both Coda and diet Coda tomorrow, been waiting for this for ages.

I will be getting both tomorrow as well. I am looking forward to trying diet Coda. diet Coda and Dropbox should allow for "emergency" website repairs anywhere. FWIW - I also use Dreamweaver.

Panic screwed up the GUI in Coda 2.

The toolbar looks like somebody barfed all over it (Think M$ Ribbon), they mixed files with application icons that switch between modes and added a scrollbar. Yes, they added a scrollbar to a toolbar what the....

Not sure why they couldn't have just added the new editing features and kept the Coda 1 GUI.

I might have to look for something else. Sublime Text 2, Textmate 2, Espresso or Komodo IDE are potentials. MacVIM is solid too.

Well, we will see if I leave TM after those years because of Coda 2.

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Dornblaser said:

I will be getting both tomorrow as well. I am looking forward to trying diet Coda. diet Coda and Dropbox should allow for "emergency" website repairs anywhere. FWIW - I also use Dreamweaver.

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Shouldnt be DIet Coda able to connect via FTP/SFTP and edit the files on the server instead of Dropbox?

Yes, but if I want to use an unpublished page, etc., those I keep in Dropbox.

Coda 2

Firstly, Dreamweaver is one of the best Code-Editors out there. If anyone tells you it's a bad WYSIWYG Editor for people who don't know HTML, they absolutely have no clue about this program. Yes, it also has WYSIWYG features, but this is just added on top of really great coding features and if you look closely, you will even see that many of the features of Coda 2 are already there:

SVN Support
Autocompletion
Code Folding
Preview
Preview Inspector
Snippets
CSS Editor
and many more...

Plus some really great things like detecting related php files! That means if you are working on a big project and there are many multilevel php files which get included, you won't have to search trough your code to find out which php files play a role/ get imported. Dreamweaver will detect which files get included and list them besides your current file so that you can just click and open them.

And did i forget that Dreamweaver also detects custom functions not only for javascript, but also for php and more and uses them for autocompletion? The same features which Coda2 just added have been there in Dreamweaver since ages.

Oh, and no, i not from Adobe I am not even using Dreamweaver at the moment, just wanted to clear that out.
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Now back to the topic. If you are deciding to get Coda 2, i really recommend trying out Espresso2! It does not support SVN or GIT at the moment, but the coding is much smoother than in Coda 2 (and for me , this one is important. As besides of all the features such a tool may offer, it all comes down to the coding in the end). So what does Espresso 2 do better than Coda 2 in my opinion:

-Espressos CSS3 Toolbar allows you to set most of the important properties via a great sidebar including gradients an more. While Coda 2 added the CSS list menu. Espresso 2 makes editing and changing CSS properties much faster and elegant. That's a very big plus on Espressos side. (And it produces perfectly clean code including all the webkit, firefox etc.. versions.)

-Espresso inlcudes Zen-Coding. Something every Webdeveloper should know as it lets you produce markup in seconds which would have taken 10 times longer otherwise.

-Espresso will autocomplete (Coda 2 doesn't seem to autocomplete even basic html tags in many cases) every known tag and also add properties to it and even place you cursor at the fact point so that you can insert the values! Example: Typing "<scri" will recommend your "<script". If you now press Enter Espresso will autocomplete this to the following:
"<script src="" type="text/javascript"></script>"

And place your cursor inside the src property!

Coda2 instead will just autocomplete to "<script" and you will have to type everything else while it doesn't even recommend the correct tags...

-Take a look at Espressos Navigator! Coda2 just lists your basics tags from top to bottom (just tested it, it doesn't even include the tags inside the listed tags..) Espresso2 lists every tag and it's content as a folded list. It will show you the style applied to it and if it is a link, a picture or something else.

Now really. Try it out as there is a demo for both products. Coda 2 its not bad. But i ended up with Espresso2 as the coding is much faster and more elegant. And the live preview is also able to show you other sites (you can even temporary apply local style to other sites on the web to test it out!. I tested Coda 2 and thought i would switch over. But now after trying it out i will stick to Espresso2 again.

Br Rat
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As I posted earlier, I use Dreamweaver. I think that there are two compelling reasons why I picked up Coda 2 and diet Coda. The first is the price, the today only prices are amazing. The second is diet Coda. I have been waiting for an iPad app. I did purchase both but have not used them yet.

Coda 2 is half price for today only (24th) if that sways anyone

I've purchased it as I enjoyed working in Coda 1 and half price is a good deal.

Not really had a chance to put it to the test yet, but I look forward to getting it set up how I like it and putting it through its paces.

design-is said:

Coda 2 is half price for today only (24th) if that sways anyone

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Hey, thanks for the heads up!! I would have completely missed that and then been kicking myself for the rest of the week.

TextMate 2 (alpha) and now Coda 2. It's been a good year already.

I downloaded the demo and made a sample project.

When you type:


...the autocomplete just gives you sort(). It doesn't fill in the placeholder parameters. Is that what's supposed to happen? If so, this is not code-completion. This is just adding ().

Is there a PHP language file I have to install or something?

Selecting whole tags in Coda

I just downloaded the trial to see if I want to switch from Dreamweaver.

One thing I can't figure out how to do is select a whole tag example a <div> with all it's content until the </div> I can do this easily in DW by clicking anywhere inside a tag and a breadcrumb like format comes up along the bottom. Coda navigation just seems to highlight the tag or class name.

Don't really know if I like the new interface to be honest, I'm sure I'll get used to it after a couple of weeks. Either that or I'll go back to Sublime Text and CSS Edit.

Bought Coda2 and Diet Coda today. Pretty stoked Panic does a great job.