My Love Hate Relationship with Panic Coda
My open letter to Panic Software:
I’ve been using Panic Software’s Coda for several years now. As a web development program, it’s light years ahead of anything else out there. I can vaguely remember the dark days before Coda, there was a program called.. let me see if I can remember… oh yeah, BBEdit.
BBEdit was the de-facto standard text editor for the Mac. I was using it in Mac OS 9, and I still used it in Mac OS X. Back then, you’d build a web site locally, the upload it using your FTP client. Later, Panic Software introduced Transmit, a sexy FTP client that had it all. In fact, I could double click a file on an FTP share and it would open automagically into BBEdit. Then, in BBEdit I could hit Command-S to save the file, and Transmit would re-upload it. Remarkable. It totally changed how I worked on web sites.
Fast forward to 2007. That same little company who produced Transmit, an FTP app that changed the way web developers work, introduced something all together new… Coda. Coda was everything. It could FTP, it could SFTP, it could Edit PHP, HTML, CSS, Text, it would make you a pot of coffee in the morning and the afternoon. It had built in documentation, it had autocomplete, it had built in preview for your pages, it had built in terminal for shell access. Coda was the program that made every Mac web developer wonder what they’d been doing for the past 10 years without it.
Now, fast forward to the present day. It’s almost 2010 and Coda hasn’t changed since 2007. Sure there have been bug fixes here and there, but no new features. No changes. Nothing for three years. (Yes, they did create the Plugins system. Yawn. Plugins are VERY limited as to how they can interact with the Coda core program. Very limited.)
My inspiration for this article is a css file that I just lost while editing in Coda. If you’re a regular Coda user like me (Coda is open more hours in a day than Photoshop on my system) then you’ve no doubt hit this snag at some point. You’re cruising along, working on your files, you hit “SAVE” to save a file back to the FTP, Coda seems to hang. So you wait a few minutes.. still hanging. Hmm. So you hit force quit and find that Coda is not responding… so you kill it. You relaunch it and discover that your precious CSS file is empty. That’s right… the file is still there on the FTP, but it’s empty… If you’re a web developer, and this has happened to you, you know that feeling that you get in your stomach. Like you’ve just been punched in the gut. Now this has happened only 3 times in less than 3 years of using Coda, but that’s too much.
So this brings me to my point. In three years, why has Panic not made any real changes to Coda? Is Coda 2.0 hiding in the depths of Panic? Is it going to change the world like the first version did? Is it going to fix the aforementioned problem with loosing complete files? Will it allow you to organize your web sites into folders? Willing include code collapsing? Will it tie into Apples Time Machine API so as to include an automatic versioning and save a copy every minute? Will it make coffee and donuts?
I hate to bitch and moan about something without offering a solution, so I have one: Panic needs to charge more for CODA. A lot more. Charge $199, or $249. It’s worth it. There’s not a web designer out there using Coda who thinks MS Office or Photoshop is worth more than Coda. Hell, I paid Adobe $499 for a crappy Photoshop CS4 update that does absolutely nothing that CS3 didn’t already do. Talk about feeling like a first class heel. I give Adobe my money almost every year for a worthless update that offers no real forward progress. So Panic, why don’t you come out with an update to Coda every so often that offers some new features? You could make some money. Think about it.
Fact of the matter is… even with all it’s problems, Coda is still the best thing out there. I’m going to go rebuild my lost CSS file now. Ugh.
7 Responses to “My Love Hate Relationship with Panic Coda”
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pixelslut on January 14th, 2010
First off let me say i dont use Coda as i much prefer Textmate, Eclipse, and vim. Despite my hate i have to defend your software of choice here. While technically this is a bug the bottom line is you shouldnt be editing over ftp anyway. Its a horrible practice for anything more than correcting a typo really quick. You should ALWAYS develop locally and then push to a server – regardless of it thats a live server or a development server. This stands regardless of the editor youre using. There are just too many things that can go wrong when working over the network. I could go on about your suggestion to use Timemachine as a SCM but i dont want this to turn into an outright flame
Dan on January 14th, 2010
Pixelslut, you make a good point. You know, at one time I was in the habit of using MAMP locally for development, then uploading changes. But a couple of things forced me out of that habit.
1. I work with several clients, each who have dozens of web sites (one client has hundreds) so setting up each site as a “Site” in Coda isn’t practical. I have to find alternate ways of setting them up in Coda. For example, I’d create a user that has access to the directory above the web site’s hosting directory. That way when I log in via FTP, I see all of their clients as directories. This breaks the “Preview” functionality in Coda, but allows me to store the login as a single login. Again, this doesn’t jive with the way Panic intended for Coda to be used.
2. Other designers and developers are working on those sites. Yes, yes, I know, install an SVN server, create a repository for each site, set up each designer with an SVN client yadda yadda. But let me put it this way, there was a moment in time when Microsoft realized that Word was a P.O.S. so they added an “Autosave” document recovery feature. So would it be too much to ask for something similar? Just autosave the file and tuck it somewhere for a day or so. They’re just text files.
I’ve got more I could say… but I’ll stop there.
P.S. I’m still anxiously awaiting Coda 2.0
pixelslut on January 14th, 2010
Both points you make are valid but they both pretty much go back to your development infrastructure. For example i have shell scripts written in php that take args or a YAML configuration file and build out the infrastucture for a project – this allows me to create a project filesystem, svn or git repo and configure users/perms (assuming access is over DAV), a local dns entry or all of the above by issuing a single command in terminal. I can also deploy in this fashion (via rsync, sftp, or ftp). If im hosting the site i have a series of similar remote scripts i can also invoke to perform similar tasks (Actually im thinking about moving all this from my custom tooling to Phing so i can easily integrate with a CI server wihtout any added development on my part).
With that said i have lost files before… Before i was using an SCM it was always painful so im not denying you there… I was just taken aback by the whole ftp editing deal… it always makes me cringe
nomad on February 15th, 2010
I disagree with pixelslut,
I’ve edit server files all the time with no problems whatsoever, it’s really not a big deal especially with Coda.
I have found that Coda can be unresponsive at times even when working locally, then again I have it open all the time, need to shut down to give it some love.
Coda is not a particularly fast app but it definitely gets the job done and is my #1 open app on the mac. I also use the built in browser so I don’t have to open another app.
paperreduction on February 25th, 2010
Thanks Dan, you just summed up everything I’m feeling right now.
Loosing the CSS is just a small example of the larger issue: Coda needs work. FTP vs local, CI vs not, etc, does it matter? NO. What does matter is that I’m using software that needs work, and if I need to pay more to get that work done, then so be it.
BTW pixelslut, how about sharing those shell scripts with us?
Byron on June 7th, 2010
Here, here! Another vote for Coda 2.0. Surely a walk through Microsoft Visual Studio, Eclipse, or even good ole Notepad++ would bring to light a number of low hanging fruit features that would be greatly appreciated.
I know those apps say Windows, but I’m a Mac user/lover/fanboi for my web dev. I do MAMP when I don’t have internet access, otherwise, Coda makes it too easy not to just use FTP stuff up to see if it works
The new version of Transmit looks very cool, and seems faster…I’ll be shelling out for the upgrade soon. Maybe this means a new Coda is around the corner…oh please, oh please, oh PLEASE!
Cheers to all!
Byron
ctlockey on September 1st, 2010
I agree, man. Coda has changed the way I develop, BIGTIME. I started developing on a windows box with Dreamweaver of all things back in the day. Coda’s awesome, but definitely needs more features.
I’m at the point in using Coda that I have so many sites that I don’t even use the freaking awesome site grid because it takes too long to find anything anymore. I’ve begun developing a naming convention for sites and just using the Sites dropdown. So I’m a huge fan of the site folders organization idea.