I’ve been thinking about trying Coda for some time now. The other day I stumbled on a 50% off sale Panic was having for 3 days only and bookmarked it. Yesterday afternoon, I folded and bought it.
I’m happy I did. I had tried it before and been a little put off by the learning curve. Not so much that it would be hard to learn, but just that it was different and would take some getting used to.
I still haven’t done much with it, but I’m super impressed already.
Here are some of the coolest features:
- Terminal Access within the app (hence the “one-window web development” tagline)
- A built-in ftp client that is slim and simple. (Dreamweaver has this too, but I like the visual cues Coda gives you as your items are uploaded. They seem to happen in the background and not take over your use of the program as in Dreamweaver.)
- Built-in reference books for JavaScript, PHP, HTML, CSS
- The PHP reference will be helpful as I dig into Twitter API programming
- SVN client built-in
- The ability to preview your work in a Webkit-based browser that is built-in
Previously, I have ignored Safari and anything Webkit-based because I was lazy. This will make it easier to debug Safari CSS issues (at least it should).
Anywho, for $49.50, I’m happy. I don’t know how it will work if I start getting into RoR or python, but realistically that may never happen… I’m too busy as it is and my brain can only hold so much.