Comparing Espresso and Coda
A few early thoughts on Coda 2:
Good snippets for HTML files – though not really needed for Rails.
Very nice auto complete for HMTL.
Doesn’t seem to do auto indent.
The Navigator feature is a nice way to jump around an HTML or CSS document, but it is unaware of JS, and got lost in an ERB file.
The hints side bar is great for HTML, and CSS. The perfect documentation that is always visible, and context aware. I just wish it worked with more than HTML and CSS.
Documentation/hints did not work for jQuery, though it id did do documentation for pure JS. There is likely a way to make this work, but given the prevalence of jQuery, it would have been nice to have out of the box.
Excellent auto-complete for CSS, but if you really know CSS I think it would get in the way. The CSS editor also requires you to know what you are looking for before it will make suggestions. It is not a CSS builder like Espresso, or visual studio.
The file panel for navigating projects is nice, but there is no way to open a file from it without the mouse. The navigation strip at the top of the file browser is a nice touch.
I didn’t get a chance to use the preview in Diet Coda feature, where your page is previewed on an iPad running Coda, but this is a great feature.
The vertical OS X buttons (ala iTunes), were not welcomed by me.
Others around the web have commented on the slick FTP and source control integration, but these are features I do not normally use, and thus do not have an opinion on them.
I did like the ‘Clips’ feature, made famous by TextMate. It seems to be the most transparent snips implementation I have used. No wondering where the snips came from, how to edit them, or how you can add your own. It is very self explanatory.
There does not seem to be an easy way to preview an ERB file from a running rails sever. I know I can navigate to the page in the preview windows, but it is just as easy to use Safari if I have to do that.
Web Inspector integration was nice.
I did not use the MySQL tool, though it did seem like an odd addition considering that that the preview does not handle dynamically generated pages. I am sure it is nice to have in a pinch, but I have already paid for Navicat, so I’ll stick with it.
In summary, it is a nice all in one tool. The built in documentation is great, and the css auto-complete is nice. At the end of the day, it’s lack of ERB file support, and not having a CSS builder made me decide to pass. I would strictly be using the tool for a CSS editor, and I did not feel it was $50 worth of CSS editor. What Coda 2 is though is a nice, more technical replacement for iWeb, and it's worth all of it’s full price of $100 if you need that.
I fell in love with the CSS editor in it. It is a CSS editor and builder rolled into one.
The javascript editor was quite good as well, as the navigation panel even picked up the various javascript features and allowed me to navigate the JS file. The auto complete for JS worked better than in Coda as well.
The HTML editor was ok, though it had even less support for ERB files than Coda 2. e.g., Coda 2 could auto-complete ‘link_to’, while Espresso could not.
The preview works great, you don’t even have to save your files to view the preview, for CSS, HTML, and even JS. I found the preview in Coda 2 to be clunky, and required me to use the mouse more.
The layout of Espresso is simpler than Coda 2, and I found myself comfortable with it quicker, though I suspect the people at Panic have put a lot of thought into Coda 2′s layout, and with a little more time, I would love it.
Espresso offers ‘sugars’ which are essentially plugins, and their site had quite a few, but ironically there were none for rails.
As I was testing these two tools it became apparent to me that they could never supplant Vim or ST2 as my coding editor. But when it comes time to fine tune the look and feel of my web apps, I could see myself using a tool like this.
As a CSS editor, Espresso was tempting, but at $80 that is just too much for a CSS editor. Considering it was useless with ERB files, a CSS editor would be it’s only use. Apparently, MacRabbit (the makers of Espresso) used to make just a CSS editor aptly named CSSEdit, but it was discontinued with the dawn of Espresso. Given that CSSEdit was $40, I find myself thinking that I would have gladly paid $40 for CSSEdit 3, unfortunately it is no longer for sale. I would likely also pay $80 for Espresso if it supported ERB files/rails.
These are just my thoughts on how these tools would play into my work flow. I think they are both great tools, and worth their asking price for people who will use the bulk of their feature set.
