Note: this is not a full review, not even close. I’ve toyed with Coda, but only enough to present you with my first impressions, so take this with a grain of salt.

For a while now I’ve dabbled with web design. I’ve built up a pretty decent knowledge of XHTML and CSS—not expert, but I at least have a clue as to what I’m doing. Currently I use two applications for the majority of my web development: SubEthaEdit and CSSEdit. Both have fulfilled my needs quite well, and I’d go so far as to say that SubEthaEdit and CSSEdit are a couple of my favorite Mac OS X apps. But now there’s a new kid in town: Coda by Panic. Panic positions Coda as a one-stop web-development shop; using Coda, you can edit your code, your stylesheets, organize your files, preview rendered pages, connect to your server via a Terminal, and even access reference guides. Hell, you can even share files and collaborare, just like SubEthaEdit (Coda is based on the same collaboration engine as SubEthaEdit).

I think I just wet my pants.

Okay, it sounds like a great idea, and I think it can be implemented very well, but somehow I find Coda to be, well, lacking. The user interface is beautiful, for one, though I definitely see some “delicious generation” influence. This surprises me to an extent, because Panic’s software is typically attractive yet understated. Transmit is a beautifully thought-out and attractive piece of software, and it does so without being flashy. While Coda doesn’t go crazy with visual effects and eye candy, I find that it has more flash than I would have expected from such an application. It doesn’t really get in the way, but still. I don’t know, maybe that’s just me.

Most of my gripes about Coda have to do with the user interface; it feels somewhat unfinished in parts (though in Panic’s defense, it is a 1.0 product). Here are a couple examples both having to do with tabs:

• I can’t remove the tab bar. The only time I personally find tabs to be useful is in web browsers where I have a dozen web pages open. In other applications, however, forget it. Unfortunately, Coda utilizes tabs heavily, and there’s no way for the end user to turn the damn things off. CSSEdit 2.5 has the same problem for some inexplicable reason.
• Tabs are not movable. If you do use tabs, you can’t move them around or drag them into another window.

CSS editing is very similar to that of CSSEdit, though CSSEdit has a few features—some large, some small—that I have grown to love:

• The ability to create groups, add comments, and specify Hex color values from within the visual editor
• The CSS validator feature
• Milestones (basically the “restore points” concept applied to CSS files)
• The ability to test stylesheets on existing web pages without having to modify a page’s code (the Override feature)

Also, I like the fact that I can view both the visual editor and CSS code simultaneously with CSSEdit (actually, this is possible with Coda, but it is harder to turn on and lacks some of CSSEdit’s flexibility; for example if I highlight an element style in the visual editor pane, it’ll highlight the code for it as well).

That said, there is a lot to like. Again, it is beautiful, and by and large the user interface is well thought-out. But still, something about it disappoints me. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s an all-in-one jack-of-all-trades application, and generally I dislike such apps. Even then, I don’t know, because Coda does a lot right. I swear, if there ever has been a time where I couldn’t quite put my finger on something, this would have to be it!

Either way, I can’t say that I’m all that impressed with Coda. I wish Panic lots of luck and hope that Coda succeeds. And maybe at some time in the future I will be able to get into Coda (like when 1.5 rolls around). But for the time being, I think I’ll stick with CSSEdit and SubEthaEdit.

I’ll post any additional thoughts (if I have any) in a followup entry as I play with Coda more.