Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Coda2
- Thread starter Penny's Geek
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Bought Coda 2 half off and wish I hadn't. The UI is non-intuitive and the whole thing is pretty buggy. I keep reading about how great Panic is and how much hype this has, but I just don't see it.
I may as well give it a chance since I bought it already, but I'm not impressed.
I may as well give it a chance since I bought it already, but I'm not impressed.
Purchased Coda2 because of the price break on 5/24 and still getting used to it. Have RapidWeaver and MAMP Pro as well.
During the day my work is based on FlexBuilder and Visual Studio so getting and using OS X tools is still new to me.
Like RapidWeaver for quick design but fill after that Coda2 will be used to tweak and program things. Wish it worked better with PHP and all. As someone noted earlier (here or another site), Coda2 does not care much for PHP wrapped pages. Think I can use MAMP Pro to help there but still. Maybe give Espresso2 a try.
During the day my work is based on FlexBuilder and Visual Studio so getting and using OS X tools is still new to me.
Like RapidWeaver for quick design but fill after that Coda2 will be used to tweak and program things. Wish it worked better with PHP and all. As someone noted earlier (here or another site), Coda2 does not care much for PHP wrapped pages. Think I can use MAMP Pro to help there but still. Maybe give Espresso2 a try.
Nicely put, great overview. I too would like to second the Espresso 2 recommendation over Coda 2. It is truly the better app.
I switched from Coda 1 to Espresso 1 + CSSEdit over a year ago and then upgraded to Espresso 2 when it was released and I have never looked back. I was looking forward to what Coda 2 would bring into the table like everyone else, given how I know that the folks at Panic are great developers and Transmit 4 is fantastic. But they really dropped the ball with this release in my opinion.
The changes they made to the interface are for the worse and make the whole workflow in Coda tedious and the app look cluttered, if not bloated (look at how confusing/distracting the clips panel is, for example). The relationship between the document icons on the top and the "path" bar below them with the editing and preview icons is confusing and not as intuitive as it was in Coda 1.
The removal of the visual CSS editor, which they substituted for "pop ups" that come up when you double click some code or select some specific properties is another step backwards. It was far better having all CSS tools available in one place and easily accessible. The code generated by the CSS popups for CSS3 properties such as gradients is also webkit only, as opposed to Espresso 2 which generates the code for Mozilla as well.
All in all, I downloaded Coda 2 as soon as it was available and have played with it right up to this day and it has been a disappointment, specially when one considers how long Panic took to roll out this release. There was really no need to rewrite the whole interface, just to include many of the features that Coda 1 was missing, like code folding, which is poorly implemented as well.
Oh well, Coda 2 may be someone else's cup of tea, but for me Espresso is what will continue to be on my cup for the foreseeable future.
Based on first impressions, I prefer Coda 2 over Espresso. It does lack polish, but 2.1+ could be great.
I do like the attribute autocomplete in Coda 2. Some minor changes to make it more like TextMate could do wonders.
I do like the attribute autocomplete in Coda 2. Some minor changes to make it more like TextMate could do wonders.
As a quick aside -- if you're using HTML5, "text/javascript" is implied for <script>, so you don't need it at all. Same with "text/css" for a rel="stylesheet"
Both, Coda 1 had a menu option, "right click" (move/delete/rename) but they removed it in Coda 2. Not sure why.
Local files Coda2 has Show in Finder which would allow the rename there.
For remote files though you are right. I suspect it is a workflow change. Change the name locally and then publish.
But it would be good to know why it was removed especially if it was used by a large group of people.
I was using Espresso 2 for many months but my host switched the server settings and the passive mode FTP for Espresso stopped working. I got Coda 2 and I think it is a good alternative. I miss the auto upload and ability to have two projects open at once.
Send the guys at Macrabbit a note about this through the feedback option within Espresso 2. They may know a work around and if not, keep it in mind for the next patch.
Wow - why all the hate for Dreamweaver? It is really expensive, but it is also a very capable web development application. I'm no fan of WYSIWYG HTML coding, but DW can be easily customized as an excellent code-based editor. In fact, that is one of the things I like about DW, you can make it what ever you want it to be. I work in a mixed PC/Mac environment, and some of us use DW, one of our HTML guys swears by Coda, and I use DW on my Windows machine and BB Edit on my MacBook Pro.
Ultimately, I think a lot of the decision process comes down to your workflow. Are you primarily working on your own, or collaborating? Pure HTML/CSS, or do you need to accommodate serverside code, such as PHP? The nice thing is that all of these options have trial versions, so test 'em out to see what fits you the best.
Ultimately, I think a lot of the decision process comes down to your workflow. Are you primarily working on your own, or collaborating? Pure HTML/CSS, or do you need to accommodate serverside code, such as PHP? The nice thing is that all of these options have trial versions, so test 'em out to see what fits you the best.
I think the problem people have with Dreamweaver is that it is very expensive, and it doesn't give you any functionality that is unique to it. In fact, in many ways, it's much less capable than cheaper (or free) development tools. It's not a true IDE, and if you're not using the WYSIWYG functionality (which is awful), it's no better than a number of free / cheap text editors.
I was wondering, is Coda2/Espresso2 geared more towards HTML/CSS than PHP?
I've been messing around with both of those apps and I really cannot see myself using it to code in PHP. I guess I'm just too used to netbeans
I've been messing around with both of those apps and I really cannot see myself using it to code in PHP. I guess I'm just too used to netbeans
I was wondering, is Coda2/Espresso2 geared more towards HTML/CSS than PHP?
I've been messing around with both of those apps and I really cannot see myself using it to code in PHP. I guess I'm just too used to netbeans
I code PHP in both Espresso (previously) and now Coda 2. I've actually never used any other editors for coding PHP. What advantages do other editors give you?
Code completion / intellisense, debugging, more powerful search, better version control integration
I got my start in web design with Netscape Gold, Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, and Allaire Homesite. For the last few years I've used Coda, CSSEdit, and DW. I'm just about ready to pick up RapidWeaver for a couple of specific projects. Pretty impressive how the RW community is at monitizing extensions, kinda like the Joomla community.
Coda is the closest thing to Homesite you will find, especially on OSX.
Coda is not an IDE. It won't help you code better, it will help a good coder be faster. It's also nicely extensible, but that's relative.
Coda 2 offers a lot of improvements, but I haven't played with it enough to know where it's better than anything except Coda 1.
Dreamweaver has one of the most infamous error messages in software design. It has some incredibly useful hand-holdy features and tools that no other app has. One of the "best things" it can do is clean up Microsoft Word HTML. That and the fact Adobe killed GoLive for it, should make very clear who its audience is.
The other "best" thing about DW is its WYSIWYG editor. Sometimes you just want to type and format. That's why blogs and email programs try to provide good text editors. Coda won't help. (Even with the iPad app, Coda 2 won't live-preview yet.) Sometimes you want to make a complex table (not for layout, for data ) Sometimes you want to get something done as fast as you can and fix it later. That's what DW is good for.
It will be extremely interesting to see where Coda 2 goes from here. I'm glad I got it for half price. Don't ever think one tool is enough. Even a Dremel won't hammer. If you're serious about what you do, you have a toolbox, or in application parlance a suite.
Coda is the closest thing to Homesite you will find, especially on OSX.
Coda is not an IDE. It won't help you code better, it will help a good coder be faster. It's also nicely extensible, but that's relative.
Coda 2 offers a lot of improvements, but I haven't played with it enough to know where it's better than anything except Coda 1.
Dreamweaver has one of the most infamous error messages in software design. It has some incredibly useful hand-holdy features and tools that no other app has. One of the "best things" it can do is clean up Microsoft Word HTML. That and the fact Adobe killed GoLive for it, should make very clear who its audience is.
The other "best" thing about DW is its WYSIWYG editor. Sometimes you just want to type and format. That's why blogs and email programs try to provide good text editors. Coda won't help. (Even with the iPad app, Coda 2 won't live-preview yet.) Sometimes you want to make a complex table (not for layout, for data
) Sometimes you want to get something done as fast as you can and fix it later. That's what DW is good for.It will be extremely interesting to see where Coda 2 goes from here. I'm glad I got it for half price.
Don't ever think one tool is enough. Even a Dremel won't hammer. If you're serious about what you do, you have a toolbox, or in application parlance a suite.
Last edited:
Yes, DW is definitely expensive, if my employer hadn't paid for it, I most likely wouldn't be using it. But, I have to strongly disagree with your claim that it is less capable than cheaper or free alternatives. I've tested a TON of options on both Windows and OSX, and there is not a single program that offers the same wealth of features as DW. If anything, DW does too much, and forces you to spend a lot of time customizing and stripping away the bits and pieces you don't want.
The reason why I defend DW is that I find it to be a very flexible tool that can be adapted to a wide variety of needs and workflows. Granted, I would not recommend using its WYSIWYG mode to create code, but it can be very helpful to find your way around an existing HTML doc (click on something in the WYSIWYG mode and it will highlight the corresponding code). I can easily customize the screen and pallet layout, create custom code snippets, custom keyboard shortcuts. The site management tools are robust, too. Seriously, DW is far from perfect, but to claim it lacks capabilities is just not true.
I spend a big part of my day at work in front of my Windows workstation with Dreamweaver, and I also spend a lot of time with BBEdit on my Macbook Pro. I've been doing web development work since 1997 (Allaire Homesite FTW!), so I've tried a lot of HTML dev tools. While Dreamweaver isn't my first choice (especially when spending my own money), it is a very good product.
----------
Ever since Adobe pulled the plug on Homesite after version 5.5, I've been looking for that "Homesite experience" but with support for current web standards. Dreamweaver (after a lot of tweaking) comes pretty close. But, I had to switch from Windows to Mac in order to find what I consider the closest match: BBEdit. For pure web coding work, I find BBEdit to be the best fit for how I work.
Strangely, I could never get into Coda. I tried the 30 day trial, but it just never fit my style. A coworker swears by it, though. Coda 2 looks really interesting, and had I not already bought BBEdit, I would be seriously considering Coda 2.