Coda - Finally A Mac Development Tool I Like

17 Responses to “Coda - Finally A Mac Development Tool I Like”

1. Frosty Posted: Apr 28th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

   I’m excited to give Coda a try soon, but for me the make-or-break is whether it plays nice with TextMate. I also had the text editor blues when I switched back to Mac. A long time ago I’d been a BBEdit junkie (version 4); then during my time in the wilderness of Windows I got used to UltraEdit and couldn’t take BB anymore when I returned. So last year I was thrilled to discover TextMate, which is a very powerful text editor beloved of programmers. I find its greatest strengths are in flexibility (custom just about anything) and shell integration. Its main weakness at the moment is that its printing (printing!) is very primitive. If you haven’t tried it yet you ought to; just google for “textmate” and you’ll find a lot. Meanwhile, I hope I like Coda as much as you do. It certainly *looks* promising. Reply to this comment.

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2. Pierre Posted: Apr 29th, 2007 at 4:46 am

   Err, web development is quite expensive using mac computers … Paying 89$ (no less) for a “cool” (or even “cooler”) text editor, just because it is … cooler (?) :p ! That makes me want to lmao. Reply to this comment.

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3. Zach Posted: Apr 29th, 2007 at 3:26 pm

   what good free text editor does Pierre use on PC? I’ve never found one… Reply to this comment.

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4. Pierre Posted: May 8th, 2007 at 11:38 pm

   Quanta+ on Linux is definitely the best for me … But that’s not the point I wanted to raise at first : in fact it’s just that looking at Coda’s website (which is pretty cool indeed, I have to admit it) and what they say about their soft is primarily that it’s better simply because … it’s cooler ?! Common ! I wouldn’t buy a soft to work with just because it has nice icons and drag’n'drop special features :D. (I have to admit that on Windows I’ve been long searching for a good text editor and never find one that totally fits my needs) Reply to this comment.

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5. Matt Posted: May 9th, 2007 at 4:31 am

   Author Comment @Pierre Coda is pretty sexy. As for a developing tool on Windows…I’m pretty fond of EditPlus, the tool I mention in the article. Reply to this comment.

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6. Hyra Posted: Jun 6th, 2007 at 8:39 am

   Thank you so much .. Have bought a macbook pro a few days ago after working on a pc for 14 years. Even though everything works better than expected i wasn’t able to find a suitable text-editor. I used EditPlus as well for most of those years. But Coda seems to be the Mac version of the tool i got used to (too much) Thanks for pointing it out :) Reply to this comment.

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7. zy Posted: Jul 20th, 2007 at 11:34 pm

   been using Coda trial version.. if only it was free.. great on web developing, very light, not like dreamweaver. Reply to this comment.

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8. glucko Posted: Aug 10th, 2007 at 8:31 am

   I like skEdit and CSSEdit 2, but i´m going to buy a licence for coda too because despite coda have 2 BIG mistakes skEdit do not have and the css edit is worse than cssedit2 (cssedit2 have instant preview and better autocompletion) i like to have all together, the FTP in coda is great and one big reason: the “look&feel” is brilliant. skEdit have automatic writting of thinks like aacute; iquest, etc and better searching (with coda you can´t search for whatever in more than one document, it is a BIG mistake in my oppinion) but skEdit have not so goods “triggers or snippets like coda or textmate, so the best for web development is: coda for everything in general + skEdit for better searching, and most better edition of non english languages + cssedit2 to edit css with instant preview. Another very good (free) alternative is: Komodo. I really like the last version too. Reply to this comment.

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9. d3p0 Posted: Sep 28th, 2007 at 11:52 am

   I’ve started playing with coda but i’m still really comfortable with textmate + transmit. Reply to this comment.

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10. pingback: Posted: Oct 25th, 2007 at 5:16 am

    CallBlog » MacFusion [...] it’s light weight and integrated FTP functionality.  Matt wrote of how he enjoyed the integrated ftp support in Coda, but I found it to be a bit to geared towards web development for what I usually find [...] Reply to this comment.

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11. tony Posted: Dec 19th, 2007 at 8:19 am

    I am a beginner in web-development and when I found Coda I thought it was the perfect solution for me. BUT, having tried it out and done my thorough research, I have decided it is not for me. Why? Firstly, each of the apps in Coda seem average compared its separate counterparts (Coda Text Editor vs Textmate or Skedit 4.0 / Coda CSS Editor vs CSSEdit). Some will say, “yes, but it is forgivable for Coda to be a jack of all trades app because it is all conveniently under one-window — which is its core attraction (yes, plus its beautiful GUI).” But if anyone has the new OSX Leopard, there is the fantastic Spaces. If you put your favourite Text Editor in Spaces 1, put your browser in Spaces 2, put your CSS Editor in Spaces 3 and your image editor in Spaces 4, you have your one-window development set-up for free. I think it is even faster working this way. In Coda, by clicking the icons to switch mode via mouse is much slower than using Spaces in Leopard and whizzing around using the Ctrl + arrow keys. That is my working tip — give it a try. So my web-development choice is Skedit 4.0 for my text-editor/ftp (I have tried Textmate but it seems geared more towards programmers — I just need a good XHTML/CSS Editor), CSSEdit for my css (simply the best app in its class) and Photoshop for my images. I think I have found my perfect XHTML/CSS web-development set-up. Reply to this comment.

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12. Paul M. Posted: Jan 4th, 2008 at 4:34 am

    Tony, you are right that using Spaces and separate apps is also a good idea. Especially when you do real time CSS editing and have a second screen. I use the same Ctrl shortcut and it works fine. The only downside is that you lack this powerful Coda Publish All function that uploads everything to http://FTP. Does skEdit solves this problem? Reply to this comment.

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13. Vincent C. Posted: Apr 1st, 2008 at 5:21 am

    As a BBEdit user for some years now, i’ve tried Coda for a while. Even if it’s a great software (UI, updated files marked for publish, autocompletion, …), i think it’s not working for me. I always have a lot of files opened and the tabs in Coda is not handy in that case. The clips are good (good idea to be able to create clips for one particular site) but i hate the fact that it’s not keeping the indentation when i insert a clip. In BBEdit, i’m also able to classify the clips. Very useful. I don’t use preview mode because i always have to create PHP sessions and pass parameters to the pages. Anyway, i have two screens (one with the editor and one for Firefox). One thing Coda can’t do is search in multiple files. It is not able to compare files for differences. In despite of all great things Coda offers, i stick to BBEdit and Transmit. I believe Coda is great for small/average projects but not for big PHP sites/apps. Reply to this comment.

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14. Robert Hilley Posted: Jun 12th, 2008 at 7:56 pm

    Seriously guys … Dreamweaver = $399.00 … Coda = $79.00. I think the price is just right :-) Reply to this comment.

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15. Ed Palma Posted: Jun 16th, 2008 at 2:05 pm

    TextMate is pretty hard to beat. I wish Coda had a more visible community around it. Reply to this comment.

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16. Name here Posted: Jun 18th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

    Seriously guys … Dreamweaver = $399.00 … Coda = $79.00. I think the price is just right :-) TextMate $63. Save your $16.00 and buy TextMate. Reply to this comment.

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17. Tonio Posted: Jul 26th, 2008 at 8:22 pm

    I’m a big fan of EditPlus on Windows (although Notepad++ is very good and free) and TextWrangler (the free version of BBEdit), Coda, and TextMate on the Mac. Frankly, I don’t have a problem paying a little for good tools. As for the integrated FTP functionality — Mac users don’t tend to expect (or get) all-in-one solutions; instead they tend to expect programs to play nice with each other. Transmit (the S/FTP program from the developers of Coda) works well with pretty much any Mac program (including any text editor I’ve tried and graphics programs such as Photoshop or GraphicConverter). I can right-click on a remote file and edit it in situ regardless of whether it’s a text file or a GIF — make changes, click save, and it automagically works. Reply to this comment.

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