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Coda 2, Where Have You Been?

codaAfter finally trying out Coda 2 a few months back I feel like I’ve been living in a cave for the past few years. My workflow used to be as follows: design a mockup, open up text-wrangler, code up a site, and then FTP away. Before that I was even on Adobe Dreamweaver *chuckles*. These methods got the job done, but quickly become overwhelming whenever I would start working on a medium/large site. So many files on the desktop, switching back and forth between applications!

Then I tried Coda 2

I was a little hesitant at first because Coda 2 is not free. I know, I know I’m a cheapskate! The application costs somewhere around $75 – $100 depending on if there’s a discount. However, let me just beat a dead horse and say, you get what you pay for.

Right out of the gate I was immediately impressed with Coda’s fantastic UI. I was equally impressed with it’s ability to organize my sites too. Everything nicely organized in a visual layout much like an iPhone or iPad. And iCloud syncing? Yeah, pretty awesome.

coda dashboard

 

Probably the most game-changing feature for me is how Coda 2 not only works as an editor, but as an FTP client as well. Basically, set up your site’s profile in the app for FTP and then start coding away; Command + S for save (Mac) and the file you were working on is immediately transfered via FTP, SFTP, Git, etc. Pretty slick.

It also allows you to have multiple files open at the same time and displays them all nicely in a top nav row. Change Coda’s visual appearance for those tired eyes with various plugins and completely customize each code type by color.

Coda Workflow

 

Diet Coda

Coda 2 also has an additional iPad app  called, Diet Coda. It can be downloaded for  a small fee of $20 bucks and is basically Coda’s attempt at AirPreview. A feature that sounds awesome and could be great, but unfortunately, in my opinion, it falls short.

Diet Coda is a great concept, but for some reason it just doesn’t work well for me. There always seems to be some little hangup, or I’m not able to see a live preview properly. It also doesn’t want to sync with iCloud, so you have to manually setup all your sites again! Long story short, if you’re looking to buy, just save some cash and purchase Coda 2.

Other Methods

I’ve also heard a lot of talk from a couple back-end developers about Sublime Text. A lot folks really seem to like it. I plan to explore the world of Git/Github here soon, so perhaps I’ll do a little digging on Sublime. As for now, Coda 2 is where it’s at.

Update via Epic Serve

Regarding this sentence … “Command + S for save (Mac) and the file you were working on is immediately transfered via FTP, SFTP, Git, etc. Pretty slick.” I’m not sure that’s even possible. I’m pretty sure you need to commit your changes locally to a Git repository, before you push them up.

Nick Winters

Nick performs New Media Communications at Chelan County PUD. In his spare time, he takes on freelance projects and fun creative opportunities via Pixel to Press.

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