Time to Panic

Apr 25, 2007

Panic, the company responsible for my favorite FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application Transmit, has released what appears to be a promising web development application. Coda promises to be a one-window web development application that combines a Text editor + Transmit + CSS editor + Terminal + Books. It’s intended to be a hand-coder’s best friend and from what I’ve seen so far, it shall far quite well.

Here is a quick rundown of what makes Coda cool.

Probably the coolest thing about this idea for a web app is that you never have to switch programs to do what you need to do. In my current workflow, I’ll write my code in one application, switch to my FTP app to upload, switch to a browser to preview and back to the editor to start the whole cycle again. Granted the Mac makes things like switching between apps as easy as hitting Apple + Tab or F9, but all those microseconds spent jumping between applications adds up over time (like the butterfly effect). So it’s my hope that using Coda will help to reduce the time spent out of my applications and should lead to increased productivity and efficiency.

Sites
This is a visual area to organize all of your sites. Simply double click on the piece of paper that represents your site and it automagically restores the Coda environment how you had it for that particular site. It’s kinda like the smart keys available in the luxury cars that allow a couple to save their seat and climate control settings on a chip on their key so that when the put their key in everything adjusts accordingly. Smart that. Coda also tracks your local changes and updates them on the server automatically when you press the big, shiny publish button.

Transmit
Nice. They packed Transmit into this application. Very nice.

Editor
Elegant and powerful text editing leads to maximum hand-coding hotness. Packed with the features including syntax coloring, line numbering, auto completing, block editing, etc.

Preview
See how your code is going to look while editing thanks to Apple’s WebKit (the engine behind Safari). Dang™!

CSS
The built-in CSS editor allows you to choose between visual or text mode for tweaking your CSS goodness. Cool for when you need some GUI action or when you like to go it your own.

Terminal
Should you need to use some SSH, you can do it without launching that ugly Terminal app. Okay, this one’s still ugly….but it’s easier to get to.

Books
An awesome reference built right in. Need to remember that one obscure HTML tag, or what’s that one CSS property. Books is a complete reference library at your fingertips to find all the info you need on HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP without leaving Coda. As much as we love Google, it’s nice to have what you need without having to dig through pages of results.

And I guess there’s more. I’m going to start playing with this thing and see if it lives up to my expectations. I’ll keep you posted.

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