Coda – Finally A Mac Development Tool I Like

Coda I’ve had a Mac for quite a while now (well…I have two and hopefully a third very soon) and sadly development tools on the Mac have been pretty lame. I began development in a Windows environment a number of years ago and grew very happy (and spoiled) with EditPlus. The features that I found myself using within that editor that I am unable to live without are:

  • Single Window Environment
  • Custom Syntax Highlighting
  • Regular Expression Find/Replace
  • Function/Method List
  • Native FTP/SFTP
  • Intuitive Remote Site Browsing
  • Remote File Reload
  • Preview Tool

My attempts at finding Mac development software that suited all those needs have turned up pretty lame results. For the past year I’ve been suffering with BBEdit. While it is a fairly decent editor, its FTP support and multi-window interface just left me wanting something more.

Enter the newly released Coda.

This is the diamond in the rough! It provides everything that EditPlus had and a bunch more, integrating Panic‘s Transmit FTP application; a Terminal window; a sexy Editor with all the features I love; a browser window (Safari); a CSS Editor (which I’ll never use, although it’s cool); and a development Book library. Wow. Awesome stuff. Or as Panic puts it:

Text editor + Transmit + CSS editor + Terminal + Books + More = Whoah.

introducing coda. grow beautiful code.

Not only is their editor a beautiful application, their website is definitely something to write home about. Stunning. What’s even cooler is the fact that because I bought a Transmit license a few months back, I received a discount when I bought my Coda license. w00t! So…if you find yourself still on the hunt for a Mac Development Tool…Coda is the answer. Heck, even if you have one you like…Coda is better :)


Comments

33 responses to “Coda – Finally A Mac Development Tool I Like”

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. what good free text editor does Pierre use on PC? I’ve never found one…

  4. 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)

  5. @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.

  6. 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 :)

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

  8. 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.

  9. I’ve started playing with coda but i’m still really comfortable with textmate + transmit.

  10. […] 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 […]

  11. 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.

  12. 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 FTP. Does skEdit solves this problem?

  13. 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.

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

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

  16. Name here Avatar
    Name here

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

    TextMate $63. Save your $16.00 and buy TextMate.

  17. 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.

  18. Frankly, I don’t have a problem paying a little for good tools.

    I agree – it’s pretty funny to me that developers that want to make money from their work refuse to pay OTHER developers for theirs. Price vs. Value is an easy equation when you understand the value of your own time. But I digress.

    It seems that the new Coda 1.5 can now do searches in multiple files and many of the things that have been complained about above. Has anyone evaluated the new BBEdit 9 with Coda 1.5? I’m still in BBEdit 8 and am plenty happy (I have 6 monitors on my Mac and use the Spaces/multi app solution described above, it works brilliantly) … but since I am always on the hunt for “better” I’m looking for reasons to take the time to evaluate Coda. Any thoughts appreciated!

  19. Coda is the best, with the current 1.6.2 version it simply better than anything I used on Windows, Linux or Mac … and the speed of that thing !

    As I was saying to someone : Look Eclipse is just Eclipse, while Coda is a mac app … for mac users that should say a lot

  20. Does anybody know how you format code in Coda? I can’t find the option, that is one thing I really miss from Dreamweaver with its TagLibrary. Thank you!

  21. @tony – you can use Cmd + a number to switch among Coda’s tools.

    Good discussion about development tools on the Mac. I recently bought Coda and have not been sorry. Panic makes excellent software, and for those who balk at the price I say: fine. Continue using a free tool; that’s what they’re for. But to Mike’s point, Coda has everything in one place. It looks and behaves excellently. There is continuing development. And it replaces a few other apps. Is that worth ~$100? I think so.
    We’re a community of Mac users. We already know that quality is worth paying a bit for. I used to use JEdit, a free Java-based editor that does a LOT and is customizable up the kazoo. But it just felt clunky on the Mac. Coda does all that and just feels better.
    I can’t speak to the arguments for TextMate as I haven’t used it, but I know Coda can use TextMate bundles and so TextMate users shouldn’t be left in the cold if they want to switch.

  22. I use TextMate for programming and making the initial files for a website – it’s unbeatable as a code editor, but then I use Coda for maintaining the site once it’s built, and I sotre all the sites I maintain in Coda – a real time saver. Double click the site icon in Coda and I’m in: code editing, FTP, terminal server access, visual preview, documentation and (if ever I need it ) a CSS editor all in one place. I’ve used it since it came out, and never been let down. Truly great software.

  23. I am currently new with mac and having trouble in using the text editor, I will definitely give this a try and I hope this will make website design services and web development services for freelancers, like me, very easy.

  24. Is it me or are people totally forgetting about Aptana?

    Aptana Pro $99 …. far more powerful than TextMate and Coda, combined, times 2…

    Obvious no brainer choice… Aptana – free, Aptana Pro – $99

  25. For simple free programming editors (single window text editors, not IDEs), I like ConText for PC’s. It has color coding and supports templates for about every language, and supports tabs.

    JEdit for linux/BSD/Mac is written in Java, supports tabs. Available through ports. Both these applications are aware when files being edited were changed on the disk by some other program.

  26. I haven’t used this tool myself, but I have heard a lot of good reviews on it. Many webmasters recommended me to use it in practice. It seems to be a great and effective solution.

  27. Can you install it on 2 computers, or do you get just a one computer license? I couldn’t find any info on that.

  28. I apologize. I know I’m posting long after this original entry, but I found this entry as a top google search result, and I couldn’t resist after reading some comments.

    I find Coda to be quite an excellent tool. I was fortunate enough to take advantage of the half-off sale they offered a while ago, and I’m very glad I did. While I don’t find it as extensible as Textmate with its excellent bundles, I find the integrated nature of all the tools, and especially the (S)FTP and SVN interfaces to be amazing time savers. Is it the perfect tool for everyone? No, but if there was a perfect tool, we wouldn’t be talking about alternatives would we? I also own a copy of Transmit and Unison, and I must say that, in my opinion, Panic just makes great Mac software.

    *** Rant on ****
    I find it striking these days how many people want the best piece of software, but it better be free. After all, it’s just bits right so why should someone want to earn wages on their work when their physical cost of the product is, well, nothing (presuming they themselves code using only free tools). What’s more interesting is that often times, those that demand free software are the pickiest about it, gripe the most and contribute no time to the end product. People deserve a fair wage for the work they do. After all they have to eat and live like all of us. Would I go to work for a company writing software and tell them, “Hey guys, no worries. You don’t need to pay me anything. After all, software should be free. Food? Ah, I’ll just eat out of the trash can. Housing? That is what the wealthy have. That bridge over there is more than suitable as a roof over my head.” Just as bad, sometimes people who make their living selling software and consulting services to others demand free tools so they can turn around and bill by the hour to their clients. Why not be consistent with your philosophy and perform your work for your clients for free? Again, it’s just bits, right? If someone chooses to put their sweat and time in to develop software and release it for free, I will never fault them. In fact, I give much thanks for them as providing a great service to others. I prefer the right tool for the job. If that means I have to pay a little to get the best fit for me, then I will most likely gladly do so.
    *** Rant off ***

    Phew! Sorry about that.

  29. scriptmemory Avatar
    scriptmemory

    Brian, excellent ranting. Loved it.

  30. Try Webuilder 2010, it has a 30 use demo (not just 30 days). Excellent editor.

  31. Hmmm I own Transmit and was about to buy Coda but see that mentioned a discount … how’d you get that?

  32. @Chris

    I just took a peek at their purchase page and it appears that they have discontinued the Transmit discount. When I purchased it, the transmit discount was right there on the “Buy Now” form.

  33. David Pesante Avatar
    David Pesante

    Question..
    I used to program long time ago (powerbuilder, visual basic, ASP)… I am trying to develop a custom financial web application hosted on my mac (but needs to run on the Web using IE, Firefox, etc.). I am trying to figure out which development language/environment will be ideal for me to get back into programming (C++, Java, php, etc.). I ran into this language called Coda and was wondering if this is a good environment for someone like myself.

    Any thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated….