If you’re into web development, you’ve probably heard about Panic’s new application Coda. I’ve been using it for a few days as a substitute for Adobe’s Dreamweaver. There are features that I haven’t used yet but most important is, after all, the everyday use. That includes CSS, HTML and some PHP-editing.

First Glance

There’s no doubt about it. Coda’s interface is clean, simple and fits like a glove into a Mac environment. Messy toolbars are worries of the past and nice eye candy transitions appear when connecting to, or editing, a site. All this results in an interface with focus on plain coding, which can be both good or bad depending on how you like it.

Hand coding

I’ve seen a lot of people on forums and blogs saying Dreamweaver is too bloated. Those people will feel more comfortable in Coda, since it both is and feels more lightweight. It lacks WYSIWYG editing but that’s OK with most developers out there as they tend to write their code by hand. It’s worth mentioning that it has a CSS editor to make up for it; though I doubt it’s useful.

Personally, I find Dreamweaver’s visual editor useful when typing large portions of text directly on page, e.g. this one. The visual editor takes care of <br /> tags with a simple Shift+Enter combination, and inserts a new paragraph on Enter.

Simple previewing

A nice feature in Coda is its previewing capabilities. It has an integrated web browser which makes it simple to quickly preview your files online without opening Safari or Firefox. The browser also has an address field which makes it possible to do e.g. Google searches within the application, although this is done easiest by using the built in search bar.

One-click publishing

Perhaps most important is the possibility to work directly with the server, without the need of an FTP client for file uploads. Your changes are uploaded automatically as soon as you save them. You also have the ability to open an SSH session to your server with the built in terminal.

A year ago, I used to work on my files locally and then upload them using an FTP-client. I rarely work that way anymore since features like Coda’s ‘one-click publishing’ makes the job a whole lot easier. Of course, Dreamweaver has the same feature and it works just as well there too.

Conclusion

Coda works well and fast. It’s an excellent choice for those who prioritize simplicity and a clean interface. If you, on the other hand, want an all-round web development application that has ‘everything’ and is used ‘everywhere’, Dreamweaver will be your best bet.

The bottom line
Is Panic Coda a good application? It certainly is, but it’s not industry standard. Adobe Dreamweaver is.