Panic’s New App Coda: Finally!
I read a review of Panic’s new app Coda and thought, “Finally! Somebody is figuring out how to help us web developers out!” I’ve used TextMate, skEdit, BBEdit, Dreamweaver, GoLive, Eclipse and even the old-school applications like Adobe PageMill to make my web sites, but there have been features missing, lots of toggling through files and all. It seems Panic, the masterminds behind my favorite FTP program Transmit, crafted the application that will finally give me what I’ve been hoping for.
My Issues that up-and-coming web developers need to know
Life in PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS and all that is great. Lots of free, open source stuff out there to get into the web development world. But you may realize that coding everything by hand can take too long. So you begin to borrow from other people by going to HotScripts and such sites that host free PHP scripts. You browse a lot of blogs to learn the tools of the trade to craft HTML and CSS, maybe by visiting the CSS Zen Garden.
An issue I have with all this is that in the end, you almost always come back to doing it yourself. A magic program like Dreamweaver cannot promise to make web development purely a graphical enterprise. You always have to come back to the code because, frankly, the web browsers are to blame. And the HotScripts you use can’t do it exactly the way you need it to be.
Once you come to this realization, like all the rest of us have at some point, you will need to dive deeper into the world of development. Let me make a recommendation at this juncture for you: buy Panic’s Coda and use it first.
It’s an all-in-one program that facilitates building web sites to standard, not an iWeb program that makes it easy, but produces little customization, or a Dreamweaver program that renders pages all outta whack (which visually becomes almost worthless and just like any other editor out there). You’ll spend around 80 bucks for a program that puts everything there, and even has built in books of handy HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP references. I personally favor the program much more than dropping 500 bucks for a GoLive or Dreamweaver kind of program.
So there’s my review. You’ll enjoy having the FTP in there; easy access to editing pages; CSS up-to-standard editors that are visually wonderful; multiple-site synchronization; and the clean environment that’s not clunky or disturbing.
Daniel B
Mar 30th, 2008, 5:33 am
I totally agree, Coda rules! I've always been a dreamweaver fan but it just seems bloated with functionality which most of us don't use. Plus seems adobe haven't done a great job of the CS3 suite for mac - it's so buggy! -Another reason why Coda is so much better - it's a typical mac app, everything you expect.