top | item 4004394

Coda 2

376 points| idan | 14 years ago |panic.com | reply

99 comments

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[+] flixic|14 years ago|reply
They seem to have defined their target user, and design around it. And I think most of us are not this target user.

I have used Coda since 1.0, but later switched to TextMate and now, Sublime Text. And eventually, I replaced all the good parts of Coda with something that wouldn't work with Coda as well:

- I write Ruby, not PHP, and it's not one-input-file-equals-one-output-file at all. So preview is not that useful. Completion probably won't work for Ruby as well as for PHP, and so on.

- I don't write CSS or JS anymore, and I don't think I could live without my SCSS or CoffeeScript (well, I can, but it's painful). So all the fancy CSS GUI pop-ups don't help, I have a probably even better solution in code and mixins.

- Finally, all the UI seems to be Novice-friendly, with sidebars and tabs, while I don't even have a sidebar at all on ST2, and just use Cmd+T for opening / switching files.

Also, as for the site itself, the demo tour looks awesome (even though a bit crammed).

All the best to them! I won't be upgrading, but I think many will find Coda 2 a great improvement.

P.S. I love that they list app being "Retina-Ready" while we still don't have any retina Macs yet :)

[+] erifneerg|14 years ago|reply
I followed that same path of editors but ended in vim (instead of sublime) and use a number terminal tools.

Coda is really pretty and wish i could have some of my workflow.

[+] emehrkay|14 years ago|reply
Oh yeah, I watched it without the sound and didnt notice until I put on my headphones. This seems like a dreamweaver replacement. Looks great, but not for my workflow. I'll stick with textmate 1 for now. I love Coda's work though, it all seems very polished and it tends to be a source of inspiration for a lot of developers, myself included.
[+] whalesalad|14 years ago|reply
Looks good but I think this is still more like iWeb than a true hacker's editor. Too much GUI. It assumes you are dealing with more-or-less the LAMP stack and basic PHP websites. Also, I feel like this is kind of another example of do one thing well vs. do a lot of things decently well. If you're depending on one single app for your terminal, MySQL GUI, CSS editor, etc... it feels like bloat. Hand-holding development. Fisher Price. I think most hackers would rather use individual tools that might be more powerful and configurable.

I don't know anyone using Coda except a friend who chickenscratches together jQuery scripts and pieces of PHP. He's not a craftsman.

Just to be clear: Panic makes some great software and they're some really talented guys. I just dislike Coda.

Just for fun: Textmate user for 5 years, have shifted to Sublime because I enjoy some of it's key commands better. They're very similar though. vim on the server.

[+] micron5d|14 years ago|reply
I think this is the kind of tool primarily used by front end designers/developers. And that's kind of how it's billed. The stuff that seems like bloat is stuff that's actually useful to people more interested in design and user interfaces, like CSS tools and stuff. There are clearly better tools for hardcore d00ds like yourself.
[+] taligent|14 years ago|reply
Tools are there to make things easier. It doesn't make you any less of a developer just because you use the Refactor command rather than manually change 20 files. In fact it makes you a better developer.

No offense but I would NEVER hire anybody who subscribed to your way of thinking.

[+] FuzzyDunlop|14 years ago|reply
I noticed it's nice new CSS feature only generates Webkit specific CSS[1]. That is not good.

However, I think their usage of CSS3 transforms to focus on different parts of the video is pretty clever. Watching the video on its own feels rather bland in comparison.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/rpVUw.png

[+] SimpleQuark|14 years ago|reply
" I think their usage of CSS3 transforms to focus on different parts of the video is pretty clever. Watching the video on its own feels rather bland in comparison." It may have been clever, but it absolutely thrashes my cpu. Why didn't they just do the transforms/transitions in whatever they used to record the screencast? Coda2 looks great but using css3 like that will thrash the browser way more than building it out in Flash would have.
[+] davvid|14 years ago|reply
1. Any sufficiently complicated text editing program contains an ad hoc, informally specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of vim.

2. No new programming environment will ever satisfy advanced vim users without adding a "vim emulation" mode, thus satisfying #1. (p.s. I am a vim user)

[+] balanceiskey15|14 years ago|reply
I totally agree with #2. I'm curious whether you've tried Sublime's Vintage Mode and what things may have been slow or buggy.

I'd say my Vim skills are somewhere between novice and intermediate and feel entirely out-of-place editing text without vim bindings nearby.

[+] antihero|14 years ago|reply
ST2 is actually way faster when you have to work with long lines and syntax highlighting.

The one thing ST2 REALLY NEEDS is :set rnu.

[+] juddlyon|14 years ago|reply
Wow, tough crowd.

This is a Dreamweaver killer for CMS themers, no need to bring Vim into the conversation.

[+] tsurantino|14 years ago|reply
Finally someone makes the explicit mention.

The app looks great but I think the tab interface looks really...just dumb. I don't understand why so much of my screenspace has to be filled with this obtrusive icon preview of an entire webpage (which you can't completely see), page of code (which you can't completely see), MySQL editor (which you can't comp-ok you get my point).

Otherwise looks good.

[+] duaneb|14 years ago|reply
Well, to be fair, this "crowd" is not CMS themers.
[+] filmgirlcw|14 years ago|reply
Looks good. TextMate remains my go-to editor (and that's not going to change, it's just not), but I've always appreciated Coda when doing WordPress work.

The new features make it look like for WordPress or other MySQL-backed CMSes, it'll be super nice.

Would love to know if they plan on doing more to get developers to create more add-ons for Coda. The community is there, but it's super small compared to TextMate, Sublime Text and even Espresso.

Still, as a rule, I buy anything Panic puts out so I'm getting this on Thursday.

ETA: I think the real brilliance here is Diet Coda for iPad. AirPreview is genius and bringing subset editing functionality to the iPad in a meaningful way is great.

[+] adeelk|14 years ago|reply
> AirPreview is genius and bringing subset editing functionality to the iPad in a meaningful way is great.

There’s no editing functionality, just a preview of the page.

[+] kaolinite|14 years ago|reply
Hm, when I clicked on the Coda tour button, it sped through the video at 2x speed. That's odd.

I feel a bit sorry for Panic. Their designs, imo, have been mimicked so much across the internet that their site now looks old and cliche. It's not their fault and it looks very nice, but because so many sites use it I just can't stand it now.

[+] cmelbye|14 years ago|reply
Wow, looks very nice. I didn't see anything about this on the page, but is it still geared towards PHP/static/etc sites with normal non-rewritten URLs? It didn't seem to work very nicely with fancy rewritten URLs when I tried it last (for example, the preview feature doesn't work).
[+] stevekinney|14 years ago|reply
The demo shows PHP and the feature list mentions "Improved Ruby," although I am not sure what that means. It's been years since I used Coda and I wasn't doing a lot of hacking back then.
[+] marcusestes|14 years ago|reply
Panic markets their own software better than just about anyone in the business. I always love their new product demo sites!
[+] btb|14 years ago|reply
Not sure I agree. I've never heard of Coda before, and the webpage doesnt really tell me what it does or why I need it. I get the impression its some sort of visual studio-like thingy for mac users?
[+] pkh80|14 years ago|reply
I like Coda for the built in SSH support.. all my dev work is done on a dedicated dev server, I don't code anything locally.

So everyday text editors don't really work for me. I have tried remote mounting SSH and using text editors that way but its never been as smooth as Coda with the integrated file browsing.

Having a dedicated dev server is a real treat if you want to code from multiple machines and need a real robust server environment.

[+] tedsuo|14 years ago|reply
Love coda for managing large numbers of cms installs. Use it for all my non-vim work (pair programing and more serious dev tasks just work better in vim, makes me think better). Exploring a code base works better for me in coda, the function names in the sidebar and file management, it's a nice light weight IDE. I often end up with both coda and vim going at the same time.
[+] speg|14 years ago|reply
Yes. Function names in the sidebar is the reason I still use Coda. Our workplace code base is so sprawled, this feature alone saves me so much grief.
[+] deathwarmedover|14 years ago|reply
I really did enjoy using Coda when I was doing PHP work around 2008-2009 (got my company to buy me a copy). Now that I work primarily in Ruby and forced myself to learn Vim a few months ago, I can't ever imagine myself going back to Coda.

That said, it looks like they added a bunch of features I would have loved back then.

[+] sycren|14 years ago|reply
Is there an upgrade path for Coda 1 users? Also while the video is presented well, I think they need to change the music - Its far too distracting..
[+] stevekinney|14 years ago|reply
Direct customers (e.g. not the Mac App Store) can upgrade for $75. Recent purchasers (via the direct channel and after April 10, 2012) can get it for free. In addition, every one can get it for $50 (half-off) for the first 24 hours, which is a great tactic if you want to elicit impulse buys through a channel that doesn't support refunds—I'm looking at you Mac App Store.
[+] kevinSuttle|14 years ago|reply
Users really had to wait so they could build a MySQL editor? Who was asking for that? I'm pretty disappointed, unlike the voiceover for that video. Think I'll stick to Espresso.
[+] saeedjabbar|14 years ago|reply
Having used Coda since 1.0 as well I have to say I'm very disappointed with this release. The GUI looks like crap and is not intuitive at all.

All the file navigation can easily be done with a keyboard short cut similar to sublime, no need for 50 different ways to do it. The mysql editor looks half assed as well. Where is the improved support for Ruby they mentioned?

Coda 2 looks like an improved version of iweb in the ilife suite.

Really expected more for Panic as I was really excited for Coda 2.

[+] simonbarker87|14 years ago|reply
Looks nice, I'm still trialling Sublime text 2 so theres a chance for Panic to win me back - although I am loving Sublime, Coda is what I learnt with so ...

I wonder if they will honour the offer they made during a coda 1 promotion in early 2009. I forget the exact details but there was the promise of a code 2 discount or some kind.

Either way, nice job

[+] jarrodtaylor|14 years ago|reply
They mentioned in the blog post about the release that it would be 50% for the first 24 hours, and a free upgrade for recent purchasers.
[+] jlbprof|14 years ago|reply
It is not clear to me what Coda is. They certainly do not mention it at the site. It looks like some form of IDE but there no other information. I am not going to go through the tutorials without some simple explanation of what it is and where it is applicable.
[+] 54mf|14 years ago|reply
Are you serious? The first paragraph:

"You code the web. We revolutionized that process in Coda, putting everything in one place. An editor. Terminal. CSS. Files."

[+] user23409|14 years ago|reply
* AirPreview requires separate purchase of Diet Coda.*

Thats a pretty big bummer considering it's the most compelling feature. Also, I know panic is a mac only shop, but platform locked desktop apps seem a bit unsavory these days. Especially applications for developers.

[+] xbryanx|14 years ago|reply
Ack, that music makes me feel like I just found a dark and dangerous bonus level in Mario.