Macworld Forums: Coda 1.0.3 - Macworld Forums

If you don’t own any Web development programs yet and are looking to start hand-coding Web sites, Coda is a good first step. Otherwise, wait for subsequent versions before tossing out familiar programs. more

I tried out this product and agree that it is a beautiful piece of software, a good foundation for a great program. After using it I also ran into to many limitations. The thing that bothered me most was the lack of autofunctions, where it shows a list of functions as you type like Golive does. Plus it does not keep track of variables.

Hello from Panic! Thank you for reviewing Coda!
I wanted to respond to one specific item:
"The WebKit preview is good, but you cant use it to see how pages will appear if they contain SSIs (server-side includes) or PHP code."
If you're connected to a Site that you've configured with a root URL, previews will be obtained by requesting the page from the server, and thus will be fully server-parsed, including SSIs, PHP, etc.
Obviously, we can't preview things that require server-side processing unless there's a server to process them. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

As a Web Developer I have to say I've been absolutely loving Coda.
Prior to Coda, I had used GoLive, DreamWeaver and most recently Eclipse. I have abandoned all of them for Coda. I'm not saying Coda is a one-to-one match on the features of those products, but here's what I love about Coda:

[*]As we already know - it's gorgeous;

[*]FTP Integration: When you save changes to a file the file list immediately reflects the change by placing an upload button next to the file name. Of course, there is a Publish All button for when you've changed multiple files, and this feature tracks changes until the file is published, even across multiple sessions of starting and quitting Coda;
[*]Programming Languages: I'm not sure how this evaded the review, but Coda currently supports 16 Languages, with code hinting, including HTML, PHP, ColdFusion MX, ASP, ActionScript, JavaScript, CSS, etc.;
[*]Preview Mode: This doesn't quite come through in the review, but Preview Mode is essentially an integrated web browser. So the workflow is 1) make and save your changes to the local file, 2) click the upload icon next to the file name, and 3) click the preview mode and refresh your published file - viola - instantly see your changes in action;
[*]Tabbed Navigation of all open files;
[*]Split View: View the same file in different modes - or different files - within one window. It also supports more than two splits per window;
[*]JavaScript Log: I find this to be great - I haven't experienced any shortcomings;
[*]Visual DOM Inspector: The DOM hierarchy inspector allows you to visualize the structure of your page in preview mode by highlighting whatever element your mouse hovers over;
[*]Functions Viewer: The functions viewer may need a new name, as it does more than show just functions. It essentially provides an outline of your document by listing the names/ids of programming elements (functions in some languages, divs or queries in others). Just click on one of the elements in the functions viewer to move to that item in your code.
[/list]
I would encourage anyone tired of using multiple apps, clunky interfaces or only 50% of the features of a $300 development app to give Coda a try.
Have a great weekend everyone!

I have to be a nay-sayer here. While I really like Coda for its idea, I've been hit by a serious bug that makes it unusable. It loses the connection with my FTP server (and I have the same problem with Transmit, but not with other FTP programs), and when it does so, and I reconnect, the file I was working on is empty. At first, working on a site, I lost hours of work. Since then, I use it for some things, but have to copy the contents of the document I'm working on and paste it into BBEdit. I'm really only using Coda now for the CSS editor; the rest is better in BBEdit. All the program needs as protection is local backups, especially multiple local backups, as BBEdit does. Then if you lose your connection, and save your document, you'll be able to restore it from your local copy. But until this is fixed, this program can be dangerous.
Kirk

I think Coda is brilliant, yet still a work in progress.
It needs more editor prefs like having the home/end keys apply to a single line rather than the entire document and swapping option & command functionality. But while I like the clippings functionality and the clipping shortcuts, I haven't figured out how to apply clippings to a selection. Clippings are triggered by typing your custom string followed by TAB. But if you have anything selected, typing your clipping shortcut simply replaces your selection with the shortcut. What am I missing here?
There's no find/replace history.
Multi-line fine/replace fields.
SYNTAX BACKGROUND HIGHLIGHTING LIKE USING A HIGHLIGHTER

I wish the find/replace was live, so that like Safari 3, it instantly highlights matches as you enter your strings, yes, even RegExp strings.

Stevenf: is there a way to preview a PHP or SSI-generated page without either putting it online live or using MAMP locally? There wasn't that I could find (looking here and here, for instance).
If you have to install MAMP, then I can't say that Coda's handling the preview. If you're previewing your page only after making live changes on your server, then what Coda is doing is no different than viewing it in the browser (not to mention that it's a little nervous-making to do those kind of changes...).
What I'd really like is for some future version of Coda to be able to just use my local version of Apache to produce SSI-generated pages.

And you're very welcome! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I code every day in Coda now. I've used a combination of BBEdit and Interarchy for the last several years but was attracted to the simplicity of SubethaEdit (which I also own a copy of), and used that for a short while. Then Coda came along, and with the SubethaEdit engine I knew it would support a syntax module for Lasso (the language I code in). The one thing I really appreciate is that Coda is the first Mac editor that does what Homesite did on the PC (the only reason I ever used a PC), it gets the remote ftp/sftp text model right, having the remote browse window in a nice column on the left side and a generous, clutter-free coding area on the right. I do all my coding on remote sftp servers and having the tree laid out nicely on the left sdie is tremendously helpful. My only complaint is that unlike homesite, Coda does not display a columnar view of the remote files with date/times. In these cases I have to switch back to Interarchy, because file dates are really critical in many cases. Above all, though, I (and many of my Lasso colleagues) have been giving Coda serious thought, and it's my current editor of choice going forward.
-- Peter Bethke, Lassosmart.com

Coda can do exactly that right now.
All you need is to configure a Site that has just a local URL and a local root. Connect to that Site, and any pages you edit that are in (or below) the local root path will preview relative to the local URL.
For example, I have a site called "localhost", with local URL "http://localhost/" and local root "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs"
If I edit /usr/local/apache2/htdocs/test.php, and switch to preview, it will show me http://localhost/test.php, with all expected server-side processing applied.
You don't HAVE to edit a live site remotely, or install MAMP, but of course those are supported configurations as well.
In my particular case, I'm using Apache 2 and PHP 5 that I compiled myself. They're running on the same Mac that I'm running Coda on.
Hope that clarifies things. We are brainstorming ways to make this a bit more obvious.