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I’ve been trying to get away from using Dreamweaver as my development software for several reasons. Mainly because the software is bloated, slow and expensive. Partly because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about the program, and people tend to automatically think you use the design view, or WYSIWYG part of Dreamweaver and that’s bad for someone who advertises hand-written clean coding. Another reason is that I am personally angry at Adobe’s lack of caring about their customers – especially after the Snow Leopard fiasco.
The problem with leaving Dreamweaver is that it does everything I want it to. It’s an all-in-one program with FTP, file management, code hints, auto closures and it works with every programming language out there. If only Adobe had stopped right there, it would have been the perfect development software.
So with this in mind, I don’t want to have to use 3 programs to replace Dreamweaver. so I had to find another all-in-one that was affordable (and hopefully free to upgrade, unlike Dreamweaver) and as powerful. People kept recommending Coda.
First Thoughts
Installation was easy enough, and they offer a free 2 week trial so I was on board. The interface is appealing and keeping in line with Mac’s expected design. However this is a HUGE change for me. When you’re using something like Dreamweaver for 5+ years and never anything else (besides a blank text program in middle school days) it’s tough getting used to something new. However, it seemed pretty easy to poke around and figure things out (which is good because sadly, they don’t have much documentation or any help forums).
The Pros
- Only $99
- Seems faster than Dreamweaver
- Hasn’t crashed…yet
- Not really any bloated features I don’t need
- Has plugins, but I don’t think they’re available for trials users…so hopefully this is a pro
- All-in-one with FTP
- The new version has upgraded their search to work as well as DW’s
- Includes some searchable coding books for reference
- Can save snippets of code for quick use
The Cons
- Can’t detach the FTP window from the code window (I’m running dual screens)
- Can’t view the local and remote files at the same time.
- No save all button
- No close all tabs button
- No option to close tags automatically when typing </
The Getting-Used Tos
- The new code colors threw me off for a bit – I know you can change these, but they don’t have the same settings as DW, so the colors still end up differently.
- I have to get used to the new FTP, not using drag and drop for uploads BUT they have a cool button for publishing every doc you’ve changed and saved
- If I upload without saving, it uploads the old file and doesn’t ask to save and upload the new file
Worth Purchasing?
I removed DW from my dock and have been trying to use Coda like it’s my regular coding program. At first, I didn’t like the cons and getting-used tos part of the program, but it’s slowly growing on me. I think by the time my trial runs out I’ll purchase it, and say goodbye to Adobe. Now if there was only a good replacement for Photoshop…
Your Thoughts
Have you used Coda before? What did you think of it? Is there another all-in-one program that’s better?
*UPDATE: Coda just upload an entire installation of WP in less than 15 minutes – versus 30+ minutes with Dreamweaver’s FTP…this is gold 
Post Tags: apps, development, HTML, php, reviews
About the author
Amber Weinberg specializes in clean and semantic XHTML, CSS and WordPress development. She has over 10 years of coding experience and is pretty cool to work with. Amber is available for freelance work, so why not hire her for your next project?.If you enjoyed this post, please share it!
I’ve tried Coda but I found Espresso better for my needs. However, I don’t use it that much unless its on the laptop for quick coding sessions.
My coding workflow is Transmit for FTP, TextMate for coding and CSSEdit for css (by far the best css editor you will ever use, grouping is just awesome). This has been the greatest workflow for me. TextMate is an awesome text editor that I just can’t do without whether its coding html, php, rails or javascript. Using dual monitors makes not using an all in one okay.
If your looking for an all in one, might check out Espresso. I’ve liked it for the time I’ve used it over Coda.
Yea, I’d HATE to use 3 programs like that. I simply move too fast to be able to use 3 programs efficiently and I already have to have several programs open at once, and the addition of more would bog down my Mac (and I’ve got a pretty mean machine)
Moving efficiently is about knowing your apps and getting your workflow down. I’ve used it for 2 years without problem. Use the same setup on my 24″ iMac and my 15″ MacBook Pro.
True, I was more worried about what it would do to my memory. Had to stop running Tweetdeck and PS at the same time bc it killed my laptop..and this is on a dual core w/ 4gb of ram…I have way too many programs open at once but I have to use them all :/
ha, thats true. I have the same and depending on the PSD filesize, I have to cut back on some open programs. I’m just like you, I keep a ton of stuff open, chat, tweetdeck, irc, photoshop, aftereffects, things, terminal, itunes, mailplane, mail.app, and more. Sometimes can be too much.
Hey Amber,
Great write up on Coda. I love Coda and really like to support them because they are a kick a** Portland company (from what I can tell).
“Can’t view the local and remote files at the same time.” – Yes I agree that is an issue but what I really like is you can drag a local file up to the remote tab and it flips over to the remote files and then you can drop it on the remote server anywhere you want.
Yes, I agree. DW is way too bloated!!
Thanks for the write up.
Yea, I don’t think viewing both of them is too big of a con, if I could only detach the window so I could use the whole 22″ for viewing code and move the ftp to my 13″
What I do in that scenario is open a new window (CMD + CNTRL + N) and navigate to the same site and open the remote for that one only or vice versa. Then switch (CMD + ~) through both windows to view each one.
Great post! I’ve not tried Coda, but have been having all kinds of headaches with DW. CS4 was so slow and problematic, that we reverted back to CS3 version. We’re also using Visual Studio—which is about as reliable as a seeing-eye-dog in a hamburger factory.
We’re in the middle of converting all our in-house workstations over to Macs and will definitely check this out as a solution.
Thanks for the informative post!
– Chris
Hmm I’ve used CS4 at my old job and I thought it was an improvement over CS3 (but it was running on regular Leopard).
For the longest time I was getting terrible errors in CS3 DW that I had to hack the actual code of the program to work. Once I upgraded to Snow Leopard, it wouldn’t work at all and I had to reinstall. This brought back the program errors, but luckily I was able to fix it for good (which meant I finally could use shortcuts for saving again…)
This is actually a common problem with DW…after making PS useless in Snow Leopard for over 6 months by not being able to save without crashing, I’ve had it with ADobe. It’s ridiculous that these programs cost over $2,000 and they expect you to pay that every to every other year…and not provide support or quality products…I understand they need to upgrade code after a new operating system….but it took them almost a year to fix it…cmon!
I’m embarrassed to say, but I’ve been loading up DW on a Windows machine. That may explain why the performance is so poor with CS4 vs. CS3. I can’t wait to go Mac-only for everything!
I agree with you about Adobe’s lack of support. It’s terrible.
– Chris
Great write up. Been using CODA for a few years, and recommend it highly to anyone who asks. The “Share” feature is great for helping friends out.
I’m a mac person, and I have to say that Textmate is the best for programming. There are a lot of extensions and plugins to aid development.
Aptana Studio is another great one, and it’s free. http://www.aptana.org/
Staying with DW Cs4 have the suite so you have to keep upgrading to keep up with the benefits which kinda sucks.
However I like DWcs4 interface and I am running an old computer and haven’t had any trouble.
I have been using Coda for the past couple of years after transitioning out of Dreamweaver for pretty much the same reasons you identified + I wanted a more Mac Native interface…
I really haven’t been able to get used to the FTP (integrated Transmit) as I am a habitual drag and dropper as well, so I still use a separate app (Forklift) for that…
Few things I miss from Coda that DW has is multi file find & replace… that was a very handy feature.
Over all I really like Coda and the plugins are useful.
Really? Coda has multi-file search…do you have the newest version?
Speaking of…do they charge for upgrades?
You can do multi file search in open files…
i don’t believe they do charge for upgrades…
If you look in the left side over the FTP with the find/search feature open, it searches through all files, whether open or close, you can even specify to only search open or all files.
I like Coda and use it but my fav is still textwrangler – when I’m going hardcore I still use it. I don’t like Adobe they are becoming the evil empire and would totally ditch them were it not for photoshop. I have even thought about gulp trying gimp that is how much I dislike Adobe.
I have a very lightweight toolbelt when coding, and I open the programs in the following order.
1. Firefox/Firebug for live testing.
2. Filezilla for FTP.
3. Notepad++ for coding.
Filezilla has synchronized browsing so you can navigate your local or remote folder and the other side will follow along.
You can edit the remote file and it will open in Notepad++. When you save the file and move back to Filezilla, you will be prompted to upload it with one click (or just hit Enter). You can also right-click and ‘edit’ a local file from within Filezilla to get the same functionality.
All programs are free. All are lightweight.
My main issue with Dreamweaver was FTP problems. It seemed to have a limit of about 15 files when transferring.
That’s weird, I had no problems uploading/downloading full WP sites with hundreds of files…
I recently moved to Mac from Windows and had been looking for a new editor. I asked everyone I knew and it came down to Coda, Espresso and TextMate. In the end, TextMate was just too good. Seemed to allow me to write code must faster than the other two. Like a previous commenter, I use Transmit for FTP. I also installed Zen Coding for Textmate (also available for Coda I think) and it’s wonderful. Allows you to write something like this:
div#navigation>ul>li*5
which outputs this:
[code]
[/code]
OK, evidently the comment didn’t like my code. So here it is without brackets so it registers (hope this works):
[div id="navigation"]
[ul]
[li][/li]
[li][/li]
[li][/li]
[li][/li]
[li][/li]
[/ul]
[/div]
Hm, I’ve heard a few things about Textmate, I might check them out, does it cost anything?
Textmate is $56 but they also have a free 30 day trial.
http://macromates.com/
After years of developing on Windows I’ve moved to Mac in June 2009. In my search for a good editor I came also across Coda, but I can’t get used to it. Don’t know exactly why. I’m using Netbeans (for PHP) to create sites and that’s working perfectly (even it is a Java app). It’s certainly worth taking a look at it!
Does Netbeans also work for CSS/XHTML? That’s what most of my work is in.
Yes, no problem. There’s even a nice CSS editor build in.
Also codehinting (wich works very fine) and an autocompletion that does exactly what you wants (in my opinion though)
I use Bluefish+Kompozer+Firefox’s FireFTP. All Linux friendly, and ez
Dreamweaver still kills every other program though, don’t listen to people who say you’re a n00b for it. IMO, it has the best tools available for web development. I particularly like its auto cross-browser check, so that old plp using internet explorer can see site just fine. I would buy it if I could, but it is almost $400 X(. Although, that would be something good to put by $200 of Amazon gift card to…
It does, I’ve yet to find another coding program that has all the great features of dreamweaver, but dreamweaver just has too many fails for me to use anymore:
1) Crashes all the time
2) slow and locks up for a few minutes
3) too many bugs
4) too expensive and you have to pay for a new one each year to upgrade
5) and I really do get too many “Oh my GOD you use dreamweaver? I only hire coders who hand code….” Like people don’t realize the major part of Dreamweaver IS the coder…not the WYSIWYG
@Amber: That is true, most people, not just clients but even other designers think the wysiwyg when they hear Dreamweaver. Honestly I normally do to. I guess its not that common to see a good coder use Dreamweaver over the other great choices out there for text editing, so most assume you use the WYSIWYG.
I think you’re going to love coda. I’ve used a combination of Coda / Dreamweaver / and Freeway (wysiwyg). I typically use Coda for the actual code and the wysiwyg just for planning and layout. I love Adobe, but I don’t like the lack of speed to do quick things (that’s where freeway comes in). I’ve tried DW’s editor, but I too find it bulky and choppy to work through. I’m fairly nacent at this web stuff, but so far I have been really enjoying coda, especially with MAMP.
“Now if there was only a good replacement for Photoshop…”
Have you tried Pixelmator? I’ve tried a bit in a friend’s Mac, and it seemed quite nice, with many options. And it only costs $59.
http://www.pixelmator.com/
Yes someone mentioned it to me earlier, I have it bookmarked, but haven’t had the time to try it out yet
I don’t mind paying for programs as long as it’s reasonable and works well.
Does Pixelmator deal with regular PSDs?
Well, that I don’t know (didn’t had the time nor remembered to do that), but Pixelmator website says this (and other online sources confirm):
“Compatible with everything
One more thing: Pixelmator supports over 100 different file formats. You can open and save in PSD, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, EPS and scores of other image formats. Above all, Pixelmator can open and save Photoshop files with layers. You are never alone with Pixelmator.”
It has a 30 day trial period (the bad thing about the trial is this “Watermark on the resulting image.” – Source: http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Graphics/Pixelmator.shtml), so you don’t lose nothing trying it.
all you need is textmate and cssedit. transmit is nice, but I prefer expandrive and terminal. while coda is a nice program, it simply tries to do too many things at once. jack of many, master of none.
hi,
i think i dont belong to open source….though i’m slowing moving in it. I develop web apps in asp / asp.net and Microsoft provided s/w like visual interdev and vs 2005 quite meet my purpose. When i’ve to work or sync changes in two diff files i use editplus to open 1 file and Microsoft to open the other…so i can alt tab and change the source lines….i’m basically a programmer and my html/css projects are limited…so i need that kind of environ.
I’ve used filezilla and ws_ftp but i’d like to use ws_ftp since its not bandwith heavy and its simple for me to understand.
regards,
bharat.
This is indeed a good topic of discussion, thanks @amber.
i’d dreamweaver but hardly workd on it, I use it on some of my clients’ machines when they need to get work done fast in their premises….@Amber, can you tell me if we can figure out the path of the opened file in dreamweaver in a quick way…?
visual studio ide shows the path of the file on the tab that has the filename as a tooltip. i’d wish dreamweaver had similar feature if two files from diff folders were opened in the same dreamweaver window in two diff tabs.
regards,
brett a.k.a. Bharat Khiani
I’m not sure, I guess if you hit save as, it should pop up in the window where it came from.
Well I came from a PC to a Mac and I needed a new editor as well. I have been using Ultraedit for years and I was so happy with it.
I am using Coda now, which is fine. But best of all; Ultraedit is coming to the Mac! http://smurl.ca/ultraedit
When it arrives I will for sure start using Ultraedit again.
I am a PC user (sorry – moving to MAC when I can afford one) Does anyone have a recommendation for something comparable to CODA but for Windows Vista or XP? I’m currently using CS3 and I don’t want to pay for the upgrade to CS4.
Thanks
Not sure if this has been discussed before, does CODA have a way to create Templates like DW? or is there another way to go about it?
Templates? What do you mean templates?
Sorry, I meant Tempate files – in order to ease the pain of updating changes on multiple files you can save it as a template file with editable and non-editable regions.
Not sure if there is such an option on CODA?
Ah I was afraid that’s what you were talking about.
DW templates are a TERRIBLE thing to use and it;s annoying every time I’m forced to edit a site with them.
It would be a lot quicker and easier for you if you used PHP includes. Create a file called header.php and put your header, navigation and opening container tags in that, and simply call it on each page. This way you really only have one file to update and your content on each page isn’t surround by lots of unnecessary code.
Thanks for that… that’s handy to know!!
I tried doing an include (index.html calling some_file.html)
DIdn’t seem to work.
Does it have to be ‘index.php’ calling ‘header.php’ for this to work? or could it be an ‘html’ file calling another?
Thanks again for the quick replies!!
I tried to love Coda so much, but after Textmate Coda killed my workflow. Give TM a try! The customization options are infinite. Take a peak at my last post about it lol. http://www.thatryan.com/2010/02/creating-textmate-snippets-tips/
Thanks Amber! I think i’ve finally got it!
.php include works like a charm – I’m a happy man!
Coda definatly has some short comings but ever since I switched from DW to coda I find it was realy hard to switch when you have used the software for 10 years. Now I can’t imagine using anything else I am such a coda fan boy The one window editing is such a great concept I wish adobe would take note. Hello Photoshop I am looking at you
I am a Windows guy and am only using PSPad for coding, Firebug for live testing, the Webdevolper Toolbar and of course Photoshop. That’s all I need.
Yea, now I only use CODA, Photoshop and Chrome’s web developer toolbar
I also did use Dreamweaver but I only used the coding editor (at work) so I think that I really don’t need such a big programm like Dreamweaver that’s why I was searching for a nice editor and voila there was PSPad the best editor I think. With the powerfull Add-ons for Forefox you really don’t need expensive software like Dreamweaver. But I would like to try Coda but there isn’t a windows version.
Congrats on switching to Coda. I’ve been using it for years, and it really is a great little app. You’ll find all sorts of little gems as you continue using it.
Really? What kinda gems?
Hi Amber,
Thanks for writing this article. I’ve used Dreamweaver daily since 1998 as my primary code editor. (Crazy, I know.) While I own TextMate and code 99% of the time by hand, I stick with Dreamweaver for the integrated FTP and a few extras I use frequently (i.e. – code folding, image map drawing, Design View for quick HTML content formatting, etc.). Dreamweaver minuses are all of the things you and others have identified — slow interface and FTP performance, unreasonable upgrade prices, and terrible support from Adobe to name a few.
I read “Dreamweaver versus X” articles and blog posts several times a year, usually when I’m super frustrated with Dreamweaver shortcomings. I even downloaded the Coda trial early last year but never made the switch, yet it seems most everyone who switches from Dreamweaver to Coda is happy and has no interest in switching back.
Given the above, I think I’m ready to make the switch. The only real issue is my company maintains a number of legacy static sites based on Adobe Contribute and rely on Dreamweaver templates and the Dreamweaver/Contribute “check-in/checkout” file locking and versioning system. (Of course we prefer to use server-side includes and WordPress is our goto CMS at this point but Adobe Contribute was a good all-around CMS solution for static HTML sites in the past and the sites need to be maintained.) Because of Adobe’s unique FTP file locking system, it seems these sites will always have to be maintained via Dreamweaver FTP — at least I have not been able to find any information online on how to use Coda or Transmit with Dreamweaver/Contribute based sites. Wondering if anyone has experience with this?
It looks like Coda has built in support for SVN. Wondering if you have tried the version control features and what you think? On this note, Git seems to be the latest source control tool of choice but so far there appears to be no support from Panic.
Finally, wondering if Coda has support for development and production server environments (i.e. – ability to work with and move project files across multiple servers)?
Thanks for any advice or support you and others can offer.
Cheers,
Brian
I still keep a copy in case I come across one of those (rare thankfully) Adobe templated sites. I’ve not tried to edit them with another program, since I haven’t needed to yet, but I’ll try to edit them with Coda the next time I come across one.
Version control works if both sides sync up and the folder’s set in the settings, that way if you try to upload an older file, it will warn you like it does in Dreamweaver.
For multiple servers, I’m not sure what you mean by this, but maybe this is more of a question for the backend programmers