COGBLOG

For the past couple of months I’ve been using a new application for development that is … just plain awesome!

It’s called Coda, by Panic Software — the same folks who make the very nice Transmit FTP client for Mac — and it combines a bunch of tasks that a developer on a mac will do over and over.

From within a single app, you have:

A text editor that rivals BBedit
Integrated SVN version control
A webkit powered preview mode — basically Safari built right in.
An FTP Client
A Terminal shell window
A library of programming reference docs
A CSS editor

So instead of jumping back and forth between applications while you’re developing, it’s all right there for you!

For a lot of our clients the process of an update used to look something like this:

1. Open BBedit or Dreamweaver.
2. Open the appropriate docs.
3. Make your changes.
4. Save your changes, switch to FireFox or Safari to preview
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until satisfied.
6. Switch to terminal, navigate to the site, and commit the changes in to the repository (or switch to Versions, another SVN GUI app we’ve been using).
7. SSH in to the remote server and check out the changes to the working copy.

In Coda, this goes something like:

1. Open Coda, click on the site.
2. Click the doc you want to open in editing mode.
3. Make changes, preview in preview pane.
4. Click the Source Control Status button to show your SVN status. One more click checks in your changes.
5. Click terminal tab, you’re automatically SSH’ed to the server. Just update the working copy, and you’re done.

Same work completed, much less time and hassle! See it for yourself.