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brokenjago · 02:35 PM

Edit: The Panic Website has been updated. Coda costs $99, with it presumably being on sale for $79 initially. Transmit 3 users get $10 off.

So I was reading one of the co-founder's blogs, and he mentioned that April 22nd would be the ten-year anniversary of the company. Awesome! He also mentioned that tomorrow, April 23rd, would be the launch of a big mystery product from them.

Skip to three days later, today. I was checking out Cyberduck, and I noticed they had a neat little icon for something called "iusethis". I decided to check it out. Seemed pretty cool! I decided to look up how many people used Transmit, because that's my FTP of choice. So I did. A bunch of other software from Panic popped up, including something called 'Coda'

Hm, interesting! I'd never heard of this app!

*Click*

"Coda is a html, CSS, javascript and much more editor with integrated FTP and is developed by the guys behind the popular FTP-client Transmit.
It is going to be released tomorrow."

Ah! Interesting. Hm, I looked at the screenshot. It looks pretty cool! Can't wait until tomorrow to see what it's feature set is!

Thoughts?

Thinine · Apr 22, 2007, 10:12 PM

Neat. Nothing I'd use most likely, but it's good to see them active.

A Leopard only Transmit 4 would be nice.

brokenjago · Apr 22, 2007, 10:19 PM

Well, we're gonna have to wait until at least October for that.

Visnaut · Apr 22, 2007, 11:22 PM

Wow, I've been disappointed in the state of HTML editors on the mac recently, due to my usage of Notepad++ at work. It's feature-rich, but the interface leaves much to be desired.

I've been hoping for something as polished as the awesome CSSEdit, but for HTML. I'm glad to see a legendary shareware company known for quality see that opportunity and take it. Can't wait to try it tomorrow and hopefully make my dreams come true. The screenshot is such a tease, but it looks great already.

brokenjago · Apr 22, 2007, 11:57 PM

Yeah, it really does look nice. The problem is, I just bought transmit and now they're coming out with Transmit+more!

Maybe they'll give me an upgrade price.

CaptainHaddock · Apr 23, 2007, 09:41 AM

This could be a killer app for me if Panic pull it off. I'm currently using skEdit, which for my needs is the best HTML/CSS editor around, but it could use a lot of improvement still. Coda might just provide some nice competition there, especially if it has good code hinting.

TETENAL · Apr 23, 2007, 10:12 AM

Originally Posted by Thinine

A Leopard only Transmit 4 would be nice.

I don't think that "Leopard-only" per se is a desirable feature.

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 10:52 AM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

Yeah, it really does look nice. The problem is, I just bought transmit and now they're coming out with Transmit+more!

Maybe they'll give me an upgrade price.

Can I ask what features Transmit offers made it worth buying to you? Just wondering how FTP plays into your workflow...

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 12:30 PM

I am a web designer, so good FTP is crucial. I found that I liked Transmit the best.

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 12:39 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

I am a web designer, so good FTP is crucial. I found that I liked Transmit the best.

Does your host offer SSH/SFTP capability? How common is this, in your experience?

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 12:40 PM

Yes, they do.

I can't exactly say how 'common' it is, because I've only ever really used one host: Site5. THey're awesome, I've never had problems with them, and I've been hosting with them for years. And years. And they've had SSH/SFTP for at least all or most of that time, if not all.

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 12:43 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

Yes, they do.

I can't exactly say how 'common' it is, because I've only ever really used one host: Site5. THey're awesome, I've never had problems with them, and I've been hosting with them for years. And years. And they've had SSH/SFTP for at least all or most of that time, if not all.

Cool.... Do you use tools like rsync in your web development?

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Cool.... Do you use tools like rsync in your web development?

Plain ol' FTP is good enough for me. I suppose if I had a *huge* file whose contents had only changed minimally I might have a use for the delta patching in rsync, but that hasn't happened to me yet.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 12:53 PM

Hm. Odd, it's already 10 AM and Panic's site is devoid of any of those new-fangled 'updates' we were promised!

shinji · Apr 23, 2007, 01:13 PM

Did anyone hear if this was going to be a WYSIWYG editor, or something more like CSSedit with built-in FTP?

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 01:14 PM

No one knows. All the info we have right now revolves around that small snippet on iusethis.

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 01:15 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

Plain ol' FTP is good enough for me. I suppose if I had a *huge* file whose contents had only changed minimally I might have a use for the delta patching in rsync, but that hasn't happened to me yet.

Do you create dynamic content? Do you have a little local web development environment where you use Transmit to send up changes to the server, perhaps in an automated manner?

I'm so tethered to my own workflow, it would take me a while to adjust to using any other server but my own, most likely... Still, curious as to how others work.

shinji · Apr 23, 2007, 01:15 PM

Well there was this too Exclusive: Coda from Panic Software Reviewed | MacApper

But it doesn't specifically say anywhere in the article.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 01:24 PM

hm. I guess I missed that one, lol.

Originally Posted by besson3c

Do you create dynamic content? Do you have a little local web development environment where you use Transmit to send up changes to the server, perhaps in an automated manner?

I'm so tethered to my own workflow, it would take me a while to adjust to using any other server but my own, most likely... Still, curious as to how others work.

Well, yes, I do create dynamic content. Generally, however, the pages I create aren't high-traffic enough for it to be worth having a small webserver set up on my own computer to test things out with. I just upload them straight to the server. Obviously as I get into higher scale projects I'll have to set up Apache + PHP + MySQL etc on my computer...

Basically, it's pretty manual right now. I create my PHP/CSS/XHTML files in Text Wrangler, and then drag n drop to the server.

Quite basic. I'm sure if I did some research i could find something that works way better for me and is automated nicely and stuff, but I haven't put in the time yet.

mdc · Apr 23, 2007, 01:27 PM

If you read into the comments on that Exclusive it seems like Panic wasn't all that impressed that their app got leaked out a day or two before they planned on releasing it. Not the coolest move in the world to take the wind out of Panic's sails and tell the world before they do.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the lack of updates on Panic's website? The images and write up of this app makes it sound like quite an app. Pretty much everything you'd use all rolled into one, and yet the only app placeholder on Panic's website is under li'l apps.

I hope they release it soon since I have some design work I think this would work really nicely for.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 01:27 PM

Bah! After reading that review it makes me want it MORE!

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 01:34 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

hm. I guess I missed that one, lol.
Well, yes, I do create dynamic content. Generally, however, the pages I create aren't high-traffic enough for it to be worth having a small webserver set up on my own computer to test things out with. I just upload them straight to the server. Obviously as I get into higher scale projects I'll have to set up Apache + PHP + MySQL etc on my computer...

Basically, it's pretty manual right now. I create my PHP/CSS/XHTML files in Text Wrangler, and then drag n drop to the server.

Quite basic. I'm sure if I did some research i could find something that works way better for me and is automated nicely and stuff, but I haven't put in the time yet.

Yeah, I guess we're in a similar boat. I'm still trying to put the pieces together into a better, more automated web development environment.

In a perfect world, I would check out changes from a Subversion repository, have my local MySQL server replicate data from the master, make changes, and have my text editor of choice (Textmate, right now) automatically check the changes back into the repository and pull down these snapshots to the actual website as needed. This way, I could easily back-peddle across revisions, and I could make changes to my site without affecting the live copy and without having to muck around with path/file names and such.

As it stands right now, I make changes from the live home directory, making copies of files as needed via SSHfs mounts.

Doing what I described would be ideal though, and is currently possible but involves a fair amount of work.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 01:40 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Yeah, I guess we're in a similar boat. I'm still trying to put the pieces together into a better, more automated web development environment.

In a perfect world, I would check out changes from a Subversion repository, have my local MySQL server replicate data from the master, make changes, and have my text editor of choice (Textmate, right now) automatically check the changes back into the repository and pull down these snapshots to the actual website as needed. This way, I could easily back-peddle across revisions, and I could make changes to my site without affecting the live copy and without having to muck around with path/file names and such.

As it stands right now, I make changes from the live home directory, making copies of files as needed via SSHfs mounts.

Doing what I described would be ideal though, and is currently possible but involves a fair amount of work.

That sounds quite nice, actually. Site5 does have a really nice feature called flashback, which is basically a ridiculously easy to use revisioning system, maybe I should start to use that...

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by mdc

If you read into the comments on that Exclusive it seems like Panic wasn't all that impressed that their app got leaked out a day or two before they planned on releasing it. Not the coolest move in the world to take the wind out of Panic's sails and tell the world before they do.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the lack of updates on Panic's website? The images and write up of this app makes it sound like quite an app. Pretty much everything you'd use all rolled into one, and yet the only app placeholder on Panic's website is under li'l apps.

I hope they release it soon since I have some design work I think this would work really nicely for.

Agreed.

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

That sounds quite nice, actually. Site5 does have a really nice feature called flashback, which is basically a ridiculously easy to use revisioning system, maybe I should start to use that...

Well, the bottlenecks are using a client that will automatically handle commits to your repository (the most common is CVS/Subversion), and also the data replication for dynamic, database driven content... These pieces seem to be the most complicated to work around.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 01:56 PM

One would hope that eventually someone does something to help that work better!

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 02:00 PM

The panic website has been updated!

Sweeeet!

Ouch. $99, $79 sale, $69 for Transmit users.

Aron Peterson · Apr 23, 2007, 02:32 PM

I'm testing Coda now. It's really very good. The only problems I can see right now are auto-complete of html and css is very limited and badly done, the reference books, if you need them, are web based, and when you create a new document it is completely blank with no doctype delcared. You have to drag the doctype you want from a snippet window or type it out yourself.

Still testing.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 02:34 PM

Testing here too. Looking really good for far!

mdc · Apr 23, 2007, 02:36 PM

I'll download this when I get home and test it out. I'd qualify for the Transmit 3 discount, but without having tried it, $69 seems a little high.

Aron Peterson · Apr 23, 2007, 02:41 PM

Bit of stupidity. When I select some <p> text, then fonts from a menu and choose, say, Arial, it doesn't serve any purpose. All it does is change all the fonts in edit view to Arial instead of styling the text I selected.

And another bit of stupid. Hit Command+N three times. You would expect to see three tabs for each new document. Instead you'll see only one tab with the most recently created document in it. If you close that tab all three documents disappear. Do it right you have to click on the + sign to create new documents with their own tabs.

Duh.

brokenjago · 02:51 PM

I find the clips thing to be pretty snazzy, actually, so awesome.

I think I'll spend a good amount of time with it, and see if I can get settled in. It certainly looks awesome considering what I do now.

Those two bits are rather stupid, yes.

Aron Peterson · Apr 23, 2007, 02:57 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

I find the clips thing to be pretty snazzy, actually, so awesome.

I think I'll spend a good amount of time with it, and see if I can get settled in. It certainly looks awesome considering what I do now.

Those two bits are rather stupid, yes.

The Clips bin is good. Nice widget like spinning menu.
SSH and Terminal integration is top notch.
Interface is super slick.
Good site navigation and Finder integration.

Looks very good for a version 1.0 and will help many developers as a finishing tool. I'm sticking to Dreamweaver for now though. It has much better auto-complete, much better CSS management and the latest CS3 has three killer time savers -

1. Copy and paste images from Photoshop and they not only appear in Dreamweaver but also update CSS and HTML on the fly.
2. Spry/Ajax widgets that allow you to build menus, drop down menus and dynamic page elements quickly with very little code to type out. It will also create and update external javascript and css files on the fly as you fine tune your Spry widgets.
3. O'Reilly reference books built in.

Oh, and Flash integration too!

Chuckit · 03:23 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

Well, the bottlenecks are using a client that will automatically handle commits to your repository (the most common is CVS/Subversion), and also the data replication for dynamic, database driven content... These pieces seem to be the most complicated to work around.

I haven't tried it (I have a similar setup, but I normally use a canonical data set for testing rather than using the actual live data), but couldn't you script a mysqldump/mysql load sequence pretty easily?

I also question the value of automatic commits when you save. I know I wouldn't want to have to supply a commit log every time I hit command-S to test out the changes I made — often it's not even applicable. Typing svn commit into a Terminal window when I feel I've accomplished something doesn't seem like too much of a burden. Do you feel like this would really be helpful?

Gee4orce · Apr 23, 2007, 03:17 PM

Just downloading now...but it's going to have to be good to beat TextMate and CSSEdit

Aron Peterson · Apr 23, 2007, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by Gee4orce

Just downloading now...but it's going to have to be good to beat TextMate and CSSEdit

It beats them at some things and as mentioned overall it is very slick and useful. Good price too. It needs to iron out a few things though that other apps do better.

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 03:34 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

I haven't tried it (I have a similar setup, but I normally use a canonical data set for testing rather than using the actual live data), but couldn't you script a mysqldump/mysql load sequence pretty easily?

I also question the value of automatic commits when you save. I know I wouldn't want to have to supply a commit log every time I hit command-S to test out the changes I made — often it's not even applicable. Typing svn commit into a Terminal window when I feel I've accomplished something doesn't seem like too much of a burden. Do you feel like this would really be helpful?

mysqldumps and loads can indeed be scripted, but it would take a lot of effort to export, download dump file, and restore from dump file than it would to use MySQL replication, I'm thinking...

I agree that commits during every save wouldn't be necessary, but Textmate offers a separate key combo for commiting files which seems like a sensible approach. The only problem with it seems to be that it only commits the file currently open, rather than syncing your local tree with your repository. This means that every time you create or delete a file, you'll need to do an svn add/delete, respectfully...

Still trying to sort this out.

Coda looks pretty nice, haven't tested it yet though..

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 03:36 PM

Originally Posted by Aron Peterson

It beats them at some things and as mentioned overall it is very slick and useful. Good price too. It needs to iron out a few things though that other apps do better.

As much as a tool like this seems like it would be useful to me, and I may ultimately buy it like I did Textmate, I also shudder at the idea of spending $100 for a text editor on steroids.

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 03:40 PM

Well, it's on sale for $80, and it's also FTP too...

Silky Voice of The Gorn · 04:00 PM

I've been playing around, this is extraordinarily well polished for a 1.0. That said, I probably won't use it; it's not as "smart" as Textmate (no tag/quote completion) and doesn't know how to combine css attributes.
I don't like how when you select a CSS file you have to select "edit" to get the raw css; not very intuitive. I'd rather it be a toggle for the "CSS" tab.

I do like the "Panic Sans" font, I'll be using that in other apps

besson3c · Apr 23, 2007, 03:58 PM

Originally Posted by brokenjago

Well, it's on sale for $80, and it's also FTP too...

Yeah, good points... although I'm quite happy with Cyberduck, rsync, scp, and the command line FTP client FTP-wise...

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 04:02 PM

True dat.

Gee4orce · Apr 23, 2007, 05:20 PM

Suitably impressed !

You can split the screen, and show the CSS editor in one pane and the raw code in the other.... In fact, splitting the editor pane is something that TextMate can't yet do, and it's a big help for the long files I have to work with.

The snippets pane needs a bit of work - but it has tab triggers, which is one of the big features of TextMate (though it needs to have multiple tab stop points too).

It automatically adds the closing tag in HTML - neat.

This, and CSSEdit 2.5 in the same day !? Has Christmas come already ?!

As for the price - I think it's a good deal. Not only is it almost as good as CSSEdit, you also get an 'almost Subethaedit', and an 'almost Transmit' too. And there's a discount for Transmit owners.

All in all this is one heck of a package. And it's only version 1.0 :o

brokenjago · Apr 23, 2007, 05:23 PM

That's what's impressive. It's only a 1.0, and with the amount of feedback they're likely receive, I can only see this thing going up, up, up!

Silky Voice of The Gorn · Apr 23, 2007, 05:29 PM

Ok, this is impressing me more. The clips, equivalent to Textmates snippets, are really nice. I dig the insertion point gizmo.

It's not obvious, but you can also split the screen between raw css/html AND the Preview (you need to right-click "open in split" to do it). Saving css/html changes will automatically update the preview. Nice.

I think Splits needs some fine-tuning; it's hard to manage them once they're created; you can't move them around, so if you want source on the left but it splits to the right, you have to start over. Maybe a little bottom-left "split manager" proxy thing to arrange the panes would be helpful.

Gee4orce · Apr 23, 2007, 05:44 PM

oh - you want multiple terminals ? Try clicking the spit pane button

You can change the view that each split is showing my selecting that split and clicking the main mode buttons. That's a little unintuitive, but it works nicely.

Silky Voice of The Gorn · Apr 23, 2007, 06:51 PM

^ Yeah, that's the unintuitiveness of splits. I'm picturing a Spaces/Virtual Desktops type window where you can arrange the panes on the fly. Or something.

:dragonflypro: · 10:24 PM

So far I like…but is not without it's shortcomings though… some of them a little baffling.

The 'Sites' list is sexy, but lacks the simple ability to sort by name or even a list view. There also no presentation of tooltips or rollovers of the sites full name… you have only truncated text and screenshot only. Kind of a gaf if you ask me.

I was also a bit let down by the DOM inspector. It would be nice if it highlighted the same code scope as selected in the preview… Likewise, might be nice if there was a way to focus the preview on the line you are editing. (by a keystroke, maybe?)

The 'live preview' is totally bizarre and polar. Remote files do not 'live preview' edits if they have a any extension other than .html/.html, such as .php or .inc (even if the contents of the file plain html or with an include).

The exact same file, with .php or .inc, but when opened from Local has NO preview at all, just an ASCII return of the text.

The surface features are good, but the more I start looking at this as part of my workflow and constantly dealing with fragments and includes it needs more work.

Originally Posted by Gee4orce

Just downloading now...but it's going to have to be good to beat TextMate and CSSEdit

I don't think it is…yet.

It does a lot, but, IMO, is not better than TextMate + CSSEdit + Transmit + Terminal

Adam Betts · Apr 23, 2007, 11:48 PM

Coda is pretty impressive app but it's not for everyone. I prefer the combination of best apps instead of all-in-one app. Not my thing.

With CSSEdit 2.5, Textmate and upcoming Flow ftp app, it's going to be one hell of a combination.

davesimondotcom · 02:31 AM

Tested it most of the day today at work. It's impressive. I liked how it easily imported my Transmit Favorites. It's quick, too. And damn pretty.

That said, the CSS editor mode would never get used for me because I'd rather just type it directly. Which I can do in Coda, but it doesn't work as well (yet) as CSSEdit (which v. 2.5 of was released today, as well, with some great new/updated features.)

The text editor doesn't hold a candle to TextMate yet. Clips are nice, but Bundles are better. It'd rock if they hacked it so that TextMate Bundles could be used (like "e" does on Windows.)

Split screen mode had me confused, if only because the close button is at the bottom for each split.

The visual grep for searches is cool. But why not allow multiple insertion points in Clips, like $1, $2, etc. in TextMate? (For example, I have a snippet that allows me to select some text, hit a key combo, and that text is placed into an anchor as the href, my cursor is in the front of the formerly selected text, then if I press tab, it ends up between the > and </a>)

All-in-all, it's very promising. But it's not replacing my Triangle of Power: Transmit + TextMate + CSSEdit in the near future. Possibly in V.2.

Also, it doesn't seem to like to grab external stylesheets for Preview mode. Which is a bummer. Would be nice if there was a way to view PHP in Preview as well, although that's asking a lot.