I’ve been spending a lot of time in Coda lately. Coda is Panic’s new all-in-one application for building and editing websites.
Web designers are pretty picky about their tools. When Coda came out, lots of people were critical because it didn’t have some of the features on which many of us depend daily. I absolutely understand that. Nobody wants to use a tool that is going to make you less efficient. CSSEdit, for instance, is hands-down the best CSS Editor on the market. And Textmate is a really powerful text editor with lots of bundles that save people tons of time and makes us all better programmers. It’s like the Photoshop of text editors.
But sometimes you don’t need Photoshop. Coda’s power lies in its apparent simplicity. Because Coda is an all-in-one application, I never have to switch applications when moving from editing an XHTML file, to tweaking a CSS file, previewing in the browser and then uploading said files. There’s zero mental overhead. You never leave the single Coda window.
Of course you can pull out the big guns if you want. Right click on any file in the file browser and choose “Open in Textmate” or CSSEdit or even open image files in Photoshop. Whatever you want. Handy. Coda is what brings it all together, taking a lot of the busy work out of web design.
Lest you think Coda is actually just a simple application, I’ve been using Coda to some pretty powerful ends building a site with Expression Engine just this past week. Expression Engine gets a little flack about it’s template engine being entirely browser-based, but that is, in fact, not true. You can save any template as a file, which means Coda can get to it easily. It’s true! And then I found that awesome .htaccess trick that Derek mentioned on the Expression Engine blog. Using this, you can enjoy Coda’s live preview functionality when editing any template.
Sure, I could write more. There are plenty of fun and handy features I didn’t mention. And I’m sure there are a few things I haven’t discovered yet. That’s the mark of a well-designed application: It lets you get to work quickly without having to learn much, and then it slowly reveals itself to you over time, letting you discover features as you need them.
I fully understand that what Coda is doing isn’t new. Many of these features have shown up in applications in the past, but at no time have we seen it so elegantly done without all the junk clogging things up.
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Be Good Not Bad is all about really good web design, based on the utmost respect for web standards, accessibility and respect for the user. Based in Denver, Colorado, Be Good Not Bad is run by Brian Warren, freelance designer, blogger, homebrewer and coffee nut.
I agree with everything you’ve listed above Brian. Another feature that I rely on heavily (as we manage a site that has a huge number of subsites) is the mark for publishing feature. It’s great to be able to make a bunch of changes across a number of the sites and hit that publish button. Coda has definitely simplified my workflow in that aspect.
§ By Jeff Smith at 9:47am on May 25 2007
Nice write-up! (And welcome back to the world of two-handed typing.) I agree with you, in that sometimes you don’t need Photoshop — and Coda’s power is in its simplicity. Really, Coda didn’t replace TextMate or CSSEdit as much as it did Transmit.
Thanks for the link to the .htaccess tip, too! That’s a gem! How I missed that, I have no idea.
§ By Sean S at 9:47am on May 25 2007
One question: Have you noticed extreme lag time when launching Coda? I’m on a PowerBook (PPC), so that could explain it, I suppose.
§ By Sean S at 9:47am on May 25 2007
Jeff, I need to try mark for publish. I haven’t used that feature at all yet. Fun!
Sean, you have no idea (or maybe you do?!) how nice two handed typing is after doing one-handed for 10 days.
No I haven’t noticed ELT (extreme lag time). I just relaunched Coda to see if it is slow and it didn’t seem to be. How long is “extreme”?
§ By Brian Warren at 9:47am on May 25 2007
After a restart, ELT has been anywhere from 10-30 seconds. Quit and relaunches feel normal.
§ By Sean S at 9:47am on May 25 2007
Sean: Coda is so slow to be nearly unusable on my PPC PowerBook (it takes 5-10 seconds just to do the syntax coloring of a file and arrowing around has horrible lag), but runs quite happily on my G5 desktop and Intel laptop.
§ By Alex at 9:47am on May 25 2007
Works fine on my PPC Powerbook. I’ve been using it almost exclusively lately, too. I just have some minor issues with weird characters in the terminal, and I miss some of the basic shortcuts Textmate’s bundles provide, but the all-in-one functionality trumps all.
§ By Kenzie at 9:47am on May 25 2007
I heart Coda! I saw the EE .htaccess trick too – you just can’t beat stuff like that!
And don’t forget to mention the built-in terminal and reference books.
§ By Anton at 9:47am on May 25 2007
Thanks for the article – I used it for a couple weeks – but not as much as I should have to see if it could be my main tool…at the low price point it’s at, I might just have to make the purchase.
§ By motherduce at 9:47am on May 25 2007