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Panic releases Coda web editor

The folks at Panic are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their incorporation today with what developer Steven recently called "...our biggest, most ambitious new software launch of all time." Today, we can tell you that project is Coda.

It's being billed as "One-window web development," and from what we can tell, it looks pretty awesome. I only played with the demo briefly, so there's obviously a lot more to this app then you'll find here (Steven's blog is a good place to go for the full scoop).

First of all, the UI is beautiful. When first launched, Coda offers to import your Transmit favorites, which it did perfectly for me. It then "taped" each project if found in my copy of Transmit to the main window. To work on a project, just double click it and it "flips" into view. One more click logs into the project's remote files and displays them in the left hand sidebar. Select any file to begin working on it. Super easy and fast.

One more thing that needs to be mentioned, and I'm only scratching the surface here, is the "Books" feature. One click and you're brought to a virtual bookshelf that houses volumes on HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. Click any book to begin "reading" it, and quickly jump to any topic you are particularly interested in just by clicking a keyword. You can also order hardcopy versions of any of the books.

Coda retails for $99 (lower introductory rates are available for now) and requires 10.4 or later. Now if you'll excuse me, I really want to stop typing and return to playing with Coda.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

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The folks at Panic are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their incorporation today with what developer Steven recently called "...our...
 

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Gordon Werner

For version one ... I have had absolutely ZERO problems after using Coda for a week now ...

sure there are problems and things that are awkward ... but IT IS VERSION ONE ... so they get a pass from me.

I recommend this app.

April 26 2007 at 10:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Robert Ellis

Coda takes a little warming up to, but I like it more the more I use it. I've posted a handful of tips, some fairly obvious and some easy to miss, at http://www.upstartblogger.com/30-panic-coda-tips-and-tricks, including the MAMP tip (thanks to #19 by dunk!).

April 25 2007 at 8:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
andrew harrison

Dave,

yeah I know. It doesn't run terribly, but there's a noticeable lag when using it. I was considering getting the new dreamweaver, but this is a very serious contender. From the screenshots, the new dw looks pretty ordinary, and i'd honestly much rather support smaller app developers like Panic than the behemoth Adobe which will get my money anyway for Photoshop and Illustrator.

April 24 2007 at 6:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Chartier

#23: For the record, Dreamweaver is one of the few remaining apps that hasn't gone 'Universal' yet to run natively on Intel-powered Macs. Present versions need to run in an 'emulation' mode which, for our discussion here, severely limits performance.

With the release of Adobe CS3 this month, Dreamweaver and all of Adobe's other apps have gone Universal, so they'll run at full performance on both Intel and old PPC Macs. You'll just need the newest version, unfortunately.

(For the record, however: while I am a very n00b web designer, I think I'll still recommend Coda above Dreamweaver for most work like this.)

April 24 2007 at 4:25 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
stainboy

i think John Gruber on his Daring Fireball blog makes a good point...Coda is not going to replace Textmate or BBEdit. but i really like it as a one-stop-shop for quick basic editing/previewing/uploading of sites. i may pick it up and use it for most production, and pull out BBEdit when i need the "big guns" (like editing a 3 MB HTML file i have right now...)

April 24 2007 at 10:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gareth

Well, I've just come home from a day using it at work, and I only have one gripe.

The editor is not as good as textmate. I miss pressing escape to cycle through all the similar words on a page.

April 24 2007 at 10:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
andrew harrison

coda is nothing short of fantatic

i've been looking for this app since i moved to mac and discovered that dreamweaver runs very clunkily along on my macbook pro.

i tried all the different text editors, and a number of different solutions, but nothing could match the "sites" feature of dreamweaver - edit the file, save it, and it saves the local copy and uploads it to the server.

this is a fantastic app to replace dreamweaver. I don't really use the preview feature in dreamweaver, so ican't imagine that i'll be using it in coda, but everything else is just wonderful, lightweight, and a joy to use.

good work panic. i'll be testing this out for the full 14 days to make sure it works for everythiung i need it for, and then sending you my cash [unless of course you feel like giving them away for free :) :) :) ]

April 24 2007 at 9:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hame.ish

oh my.... only played with this for a few moments.. but I think... I am in love.

seriously I have 4 major web projects going on right now, and I have been quoted in the past as saying 'I hate building web sites' but I am constantly offered work doing just that, and latly have started to stumble my way through and get better at various aspects of it. I was enjoying transmit/cssedit and other great mac apps as tools to make things less painful.

but this... this is just bloody wonderful. I can see myself using it as the basis for any site, and calling on the bigger guns (flash/dreamweaver/photoshop) only when nessesery, instead of having to perform basic tweaks and tasks within a lumbering set of tools.

wow... ok... wow.

haha.. it's days like this that I am reminded why I am a mac user.

April 24 2007 at 3:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dashiel

usability wise coda kicks aptana's ass, especially the font they use which looks like a custom job. i have friends who swear by eclipse, but i just can't get in to it. so of course aptana has the ability to use other views like php, svn, etc... and if i'm not mistaken there are some localhost/sql plugins. the ruby/ajax libraries are much more realized in aptana... but at the end of the day setting up coda to use you favorite libraries is pretty easy.

oh and again if you want localhost access see post #19. basically download MAMP and enable FTP in your sharing prefs. done and done.

April 24 2007 at 1:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kevin

Interesting that Aptana was mentioned, I'd like to know how it compares

April 23 2007 at 11:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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