I was very excited when I downloaded the 15-day preview for Coda. So exited, in fact, that I finally got around to rebuilding Unnerving.org and creating a custom theme for WordPress for this blog. I did it all in Coda, taking advantage of its handling of PHP syntax, inclusion of reference materials, and mindlessly simple previewing abilities for HTML files.

I’ve noticed a couple things:

• If you use another app to muck with the files while Coda has a Site open (i.e., move, rename, add or delete files or folders within the Site on your local disk, either via Finder or Terminal), Coda will get very upset and crash. I dutifully submitted my crash reports, so hopefully that will be helpful to Panic.
• My 15-day trial ended after only five days of use. This is merely annoying, as I already plan to purchase a full copy for myself, but it means I can’t use it until I make the purchase. I sent Panic an email about this, too, but I honestly don’t expect a response. It qualifies, for me, as a fit-and-finish problem, however, which might be off-putting to potential users.

All that said, I really like Coda. As I’ve seen mentioned elsewhere, you kind of want to slip back into your Editor/Terminal/File Transfer/Web Browser paradigm every so often, but there’s definitely something about Coda that convinces you to just stay inside of it. It’s comfortable.

As a rule, I’m not always happy with apps that force you to work within a single window. I’ve adapted for Mail, simply due to the fact that separate message windows don’t work the way I’d necessarily like, either. Being a visual person, I would definitely like the ability to selectively tear tabs off into their own windows (and, ideally, merge them back as tabs into other windows) so that I could have a couple files in the same Site side-by-side for the times when it’s useful. All in all, though, I found myself working quite comfortably after a while.

Coda is definitely not a PHP IDE, though the only area it falls down in is the ability to preview/debug PHP scripts. This really is not a major problem for the target users (including myself), but some might see it as a negative point. PHP support is good enough for me, with great syntax coloring and the integration of the PHP reference. You can select any PHP builtin or function and hit a hot key to jump to its reference page.

I haven’t explored the Javascript support of Coda, as I don’t do any Javascript coding as of yet. Given that Coda previews, by default, using WebKit, I imagine it’ll be able to preview with full Javascript as well. Again, built-in Javascript reference material and full syntax support is included.

I’m not sure what to say about the CSS editor aside from the fact that man, it’s awesome. I’ve split the CSS for unnerving.org out into a site-wide file, which means Coda can’t include it for previews unless I fetch it from the server, but Coda still makes editing the CSS file stupidly easy. If you have your CSS within the HTML file itself, it’s even better, and Coda can give your previews full justice. Definitely good, either way you look at it.

Overall, I’m really quite satisfied with Coda, and will be eagerly plunking down my cash for a license as soon as my wife lets me.

Take a look; I’m sure you’ll be impressed, too.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Apple, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.