Coda 1.0.4

After a delay of Copland-like proportions, Panic has released an update to Coda. According to Steven Frank, Coda 1.0.4 “concentrates mainly on the remaining 1.0 bugs, and some important Leopard compatibility issues. That means, I’m sorry to say, no Subversion or Global Find-and-Replace yet. Now that most of the more significant bugs are dead, we’ll once again be shifting our focus to features, so hang in there!”

Still no global find-and-replace. This hurts in deep dark places not discussed in polite society, but at least we get a decent slew of fixes. Some highlights from the release notes:

• “Use Selection for Find” (cmd-e) now works in all modes, instead of just the editor.
• Fixed crash when opening a file that requires authentication to open
• ESC now cancels block edit.
• Externally editing files from Coda now tracks files for publishing.
• Added keyboard shortcut for item-level publish (cmd-option-p).
• Change tracking now works with clips, encode entities, etc
• Creating an archive of a single item no longer adds a directory hierarchy to the zip file
• Copy URL now respects the preference correctly

Also of note is the new Coda Users Google group, which goes towards improving that transparency thing that Panic is sorta not great at.

Coda: Previewing for Fun and Profit

After being part of the collective gush-mob of iPhone zombies for the last few weeks, Steven Frank has posted a new detailed look at Coda, this time the assorted preview modes. For experienced Coda users there’s not much new here in terms of hints or tricks, but it is a good overview for newer users.

He does sneak in a few references to user-requested features that seem to be under work, namely a big one of mine, live updating of pages with linked CSS files.

Coda Wins Apple Design Award

At the 2007 Apple Design Awards, Coda won for Best Mac OS X User Experience. Congratulations, Panic!

UPDATE: Panic’s Cabel Sasser has posted a humbled account of the event. 

Two Thumbs Way Up

Simple Station has posted a review of Coda (better a few months than never, I guess). Their conclusion is pretty much on par with everyone else:

We have to give Panic two thumbs way up for Coda. It’s simplicity, clean UI and awesome built-in features have definitely convinced us to switch from using our current editor SKEdit. While there are a few features we wish would be included, the development cycle seems pretty fast with new versions coming out every few weeks.

Coda 1.0.3 Released

Gotta give these guys props for firing out very regular and helpful updates. Coda 1.0.3 is out now, here are some highlights from the release notes:

• New! Tabs can now be reordered using drag and drop
• New! Includes ASP / VBScript syntax mode
• New! Includes Cold Fusion (CFML) syntax mode
• New! You can now drop a folder on the Dock icon to change the local file list to that folder
• New! Dragging text onto clips window will now create new clip
• New! Can now re-order clips via drag and drop

Has it Been Only a Month?

Panic’s Steven Frank has posted a reflection on Coda’s first month (seriously, it seems longer to me). Primarily, he ruminates on the three distinct categories of people who have shown interest in Coda*:

A lot of people have been writing us to say that it has changed the way they make web sites, and that they can’t go back to their old ways. A lot of people have looked at it and said they like it, but it needs to do a few more things, or a few things differently. And a lot of people have looked at it and said it’s not for them.

He also indicated that 1.0.3 will be along soon, and calls for people to submit designs for a “Made with Coda” badge (cuz 2007 is the new 1997!).

*Count me as a #1 with a smattering of #2, Steven

3.8 out of 5 Ain’t Bad

Eric Barstad of HTML Editor Reviews has posted a review of Coda. Sentiments run pretty much along the same lines as other folks, but he calls out a gripe that I also had:

When I column select text, the selected column isn’t highlighted; rather, the entire lines are highlighted, which can be quite confusing (this might be just my system — I’m using Synergy to share a Windows keyboard and mouse with my Mac Mini).

No, it’s not just your system, Eric, that’s how Coda does it. While it’s definitely confusing at first, I have found it does have advantages; by selecting entire lines, it allows you to do column edits throughout the entire block, rather than just a specifically selected column (I was surprised how often I did edits within the entire block and not just what I had initially intended).

Still, this might be something worth setting as a pref for users who prefer “real” column selection (way down the line, though, after trivial things like site-wide find/change and Clips key binding are added).

Coda, A Few Weeks Later

Brian Warren posted his own impressions of Coda afterusing it pretty heavily for a while. He notes:

“Coda’s power lies in its apparent simplicity. Because Coda is an all-in-one application, I never have to switch applications when moving from editing an XHTML file, to tweaking a CSS file, previewing in the browser and then uploading said files. There’s zero mental overhead. “

Panic Releases Coda 1.0.2

Woohoo! Let’s cut to the chase:

Coda 1.0.2 adds a number of improvements, including:

• Much-requested editor features, including “Close Current Tag”, “Balance”, and “Remove Line Breaks”
• The ability to quickly publish arbitrary files to a site, uploading them to the right place
• Automatic <img> tags when dragging images from the sidebar into an editor
• Copying and pasting of CSS styles and attributes
• Much more!
• It also improves stability and fixes a number of magical bugs. This update is recommended for all users.

Full release notes

“Cool app. Too bad I can’t use it.”

Constructive Nonconformist ruminates that Coda’s paradigm of working on one local copy to one live site may be good for some, but not for everyone:

When I build a website it’s generally for a client. In addition to development and production, I need a third server: a ‘user acceptance testing’ web server. Sometimes I need a fourth server for prototyping. (Of course I don’t need separate physical servers. Prototyping, development, and testing could be different directories and/or ports on one server.)

This is a fair complaint, but I think Panic is right to keep Coda streamlined in how sites are managed. For coders who built sites of this magnitude, Coda would become so bloated to fulfill every need it would collapse under its own weight. I think the audience of web authors who work more-or-less directly on live sites is great enough to sustain the app.