Testing Coda, the all new editor for Mac
Everybody is talking about the new editor-ftp-sftp-client for Mac, named Coda, and developed by Panic, the guys behind Transmit.
I have downloaded a trial version and I've been testing it for a while.
As they say in their web page: [before Coda] "We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, running queries in Terminal, using a CSS editor, and reading references on the web."
Coda combines a text editor (TextMate style), with a visual CSS editor, a preview function, a FTP/SFTP client that automatically uploads files when saved, and a terminal tab (local or remote), with a beautiful UI.
In my opinion the idea is really good, but there are some things that as a Rails developer, do not work as good as expected, and I am comparing it to TextMate, which is the editor I use right now.
For instance, the preview function won't work, because, obviously .rhtml files are not recognized, and so, the source code appears when using the preview function.
When developing in Rails, Coda should detect it, and automatically point the WebKit based navigator to http://localhost:3000/controllerN/actionM when editing actionM.rhtml. That would be perfect.
The automatic FTP/SFTP client is quite useless for Rails (provided you don't need to test your application in a remote server), as usually, you will do the previews in a local mongrel server.
The CSS Editor is actually quite cool, and it seems to work well, as is the Terminal tab, which is useful as well.
The Books tab is a good idea too, particularly if they add more "books" in the future (currently HTML, CSS and PHP), but I'm not sure I would use it a lot. Still seems faster to google the function you're searching for.
There is an auto completion feature in the editor (for Rails too), and completes for example, remote_form_tag as you type, but that's it. It doesn't show you the attributes, like :update, :url, etc. It doesn't complete models, classes, or any other functions such as find or new either.
Reading back the post, it seems too critical, but it's not what I meant it to be. It's just some suggestions to make a really good editor a perfect editor.
At a $79 price tag, I'd say buy it if you don't develop in Rails. Stick with TextMate (€39) instead, but check out the evolution of Coda.
As they say in their web page: [before Coda] "We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, running queries in Terminal, using a CSS editor, and reading references on the web."
Coda combines a text editor (TextMate style), with a visual CSS editor, a preview function, a FTP/SFTP client that automatically uploads files when saved, and a terminal tab (local or remote), with a beautiful UI.
In my opinion the idea is really good, but there are some things that as a Rails developer, do not work as good as expected, and I am comparing it to TextMate, which is the editor I use right now.
For instance, the preview function won't work, because, obviously .rhtml files are not recognized, and so, the source code appears when using the preview function.
When developing in Rails, Coda should detect it, and automatically point the WebKit based navigator to http://localhost:3000/controllerN/actionM when editing actionM.rhtml. That would be perfect.
The automatic FTP/SFTP client is quite useless for Rails (provided you don't need to test your application in a remote server), as usually, you will do the previews in a local mongrel server.
The CSS Editor is actually quite cool, and it seems to work well, as is the Terminal tab, which is useful as well.
The Books tab is a good idea too, particularly if they add more "books" in the future (currently HTML, CSS and PHP), but I'm not sure I would use it a lot. Still seems faster to google the function you're searching for.
There is an auto completion feature in the editor (for Rails too), and completes for example, remote_form_tag as you type, but that's it. It doesn't show you the attributes, like :update, :url, etc. It doesn't complete models, classes, or any other functions such as find or new either.
Reading back the post, it seems too critical, but it's not what I meant it to be. It's just some suggestions to make a really good editor a perfect editor.
At a $79 price tag, I'd say buy it if you don't develop in Rails. Stick with TextMate (€39) instead, but check out the evolution of Coda.
