Legendary Mac software company, Panic, Inc has recently released Coda, a new web development tool that's really, not that new.

This website, and all my modern web work, is done using a handful of tools: SubEthaEdit, Transmit, Safari, and Adobe Photoshop. I also run Internet Explorer on my PC for testing. Once in a while, I'll fire up GoLive for some CSS help, or simply do a google search. My good friend Kris Tate of Zooomr.com does all his work in a similar fashion. I would imagine this is similar for most Mac web developers, some of which substituting BBEdit for SubEthaEdit.

Well, being the intrepid software engineers they are, said this is silly. So they produced Coda. Now I only run Coda and Photoshop. See, they developed Transmit Turbo and built that in. They worked with TheCodingMonkeys to integrate the new Subetha Engine into it. I find the "new" SubEtha included in Coda actually better. It includes syntax completion and a "hints" section at the bottom, which is very helpful.

They included a web browser, built on Apple's Webkit, to preview your site as you work. Local files are updated instantly, just like in SubEtha, while remote files are automatically reloaded when you save. Awesome.

They included a CSS Editor. I can write this by hand, and usually do - because GoLive produces ugly code. I'll still probably write this by hand, but the editor really removes nearly my entire need for GoLive. It's now very quick and easy to write complicated CSS.

Next, they built in a terminal. I don't have SSH access to my webserver, and don't have a use for it. But the rare times I work on Zooomr, we use the SSH to restart the daemon process. So this is also handy.

Lastly, they included digital books. Usefulish. I'm more of an expert, so don't really need this, but it would be very useful for somebody new to hand-writing code.

Overall, I'm willing to pay for this. The trial period is a little short, only 15 days, but I'll have some cash by then.

If you develop for the web - update your process and get used to Coda. This is an awesome tool.