Sublime Forum

**iPaintCode** · January 13, 2016, 7:24am

Panic makes great Mac apps, and it’s nice to see Coda 2 has been overhauled in Panic fashion. The GUI is defiantly sexy and has the native touch that ST2 lacks, but then again ST2 has some features most editors lack, can’t win them all. I don’t think Panic is trying to cater to the keyboard ninja but as Coda 1 and a few lightweight plugins I was able to use Coda with little mouse action (no where near a Vim like experience but cool non the less). There was just a good 1/2 dozen shortcomings and I stuck to TextMate then to Sublime. End of the day it’s a really nice all-in-one app that will have great appeal, I’m sure once again it beats the hell out of bloatweaver. I will defiantly update my license, though I just recently bought a ST2 license.

(I’m a sucker for Text Editors in an OCD way).

**brianf** · January 13, 2016, 7:24am

Nothing I have tried has given me the level of productivity that ST2 gives, and I have tried many contenders. Every time I go in, look at the GUI and features, and feel optimistic, and every time I end up fighting with the interface and getting less done. I’ve worked with Textmate, Taco, Netbeans, Nightmareweaver, Coda, and Espresso, to name a few. Espresso was close to being good, but I honestly think it has the same issues that Coda and other “middleweight” editors have: They aren’t powerful enough to feel like a complete IDE, and aren’t lightweight and quick enough to feel like a good text editor. I see that not as a benefit, but a detriment.

I was close with Netbeans, and still use it occasionally for certain things, but it is too Java-oriented. It had promise with plugins for LESS, CoffeeScript, JSLint, etc., but they aren’t maintained well. Netbeans obviously isn’t easy to develop for, and their updating SUCKS. The fact that it’s Ruby module doesn’t work in 7+ brings its stock down a lot. Let’s face it, Oracle doesn’t give a crap about anything but pushing their Java agenda, and Java does nothing for me personally.

ST2 is not visually beautiful, let’s face it. But it’s lightning fast, powerful, and let’s you get stuff done fast.

If I had one gripe with ST2 it would be the configuration time. To get the most of it, you have to make it your own, and in order to do that, you need to tweak a bunch of settings. Doing this without much in the way of easily accessible documentation from a series of hash files (or JSON, or dictionaries, or whatever you’d prefer to call it), isn’t optimal. However, I would much rather have the developer(s) working on important features and functionality than on coding a complex series of settings GUIs and APIs.

**C0D312** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

I’m offended.

**skube** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Nice theme! Is this available somewhere?

**C0D312** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Nah, it’s just my fork of raik’s theme.

**Fed03** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

share it! XD

p.s. where did jon go? :S

**atomi** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Maybe he’s preparing for a final 2.0 release.
It’s been some time now hasn’t it…

Hopefully, it’s a good thing.

**C0D312** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Jon’s got his work cut out for him with the official release of v2.0. Patience.

**Fed03** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

yeah absolutly just wondering

**ddamko** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Is there any time frame as to when the “official” release of Sublime Text 2 will be. I would love to purchase it but I have a hard time justifying paying for a “beta” of anything. Keep up the good work.

**handycam** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

FWIW, I have Coda 2 now and have been using it for a few hours, for HTML/CSS/SCSS.

On the plus side, the UI is very clean and attractive. Autocomplete of tags and attributes just works; welcome after the Russian Roulette completes I usually get with Sublime. Snippets are functional and accessible; of course ST snippets can be far more powerful, but for the basics I was able to quickly reproduce ones I can’t live without. The autocompletes for some CSS attributes, such as color and border, offer an enhanced popup if you want with a GUI and color picker.

File navigation and management is much better than ST2; the multitude of ways to navigate the file system are great. The path bar at the top of a document window is great, as is the new pop-up menu for every step in the path. I can drag an image to get a full image tag inserted.

Comment/uncomment works as expected; annoys me in ST2 it does not automatically toggle comments.

Air Share allows me to preview my file on the iPad, with the excellent Diet Coda. Diet Coda works with FTP and such, allows you to access files on a server and edit, rename, move etc. the files. Nice editing UI. Not as functional as Textastic, which allows you to download one or many files and edit offline, and ftp them up later.

Although Coda 2 improved its find/replace, ST2 is still WAY more powerful with multiple selections and the like. For heavy lifting in finde/replace I switched to ST2 to make the edits and then back to Coda.

Coda is (and has always been) optimized for working on entire sites, with an FTP, S3, or webDav connection. I work for sites where I have local access to the servers (over our LAN) and it’s a PITA I can’t manage my uploads to those sites automatically.

Bottom line, IMO is that Coda 2 is an attractive editor for the Mac. There are many things for “power editing” I am glad to have ST2 for, though.

**loremipsum** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Very interesting review, thanks !

**jbrooksuk** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

OH! MY! GOD!

Please share that theme!

**C0D312** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Okay. I give in. Here’s a link to my Theme: gist.github.com/1657493 (modified version of IR_black)

**handycam** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

You have the link to the color scheme (Refresh) thanks but what about the Theme?

**C0D312** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Whoops. Thanks handy. Fixed.

**ntenney** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Love the theme! It looks really nice with Monokai. Trying out your color scheme right now.

**handycam** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Thanks. Here’s a very good review ofCoda 2 from a Sublime 2 user. I agree with this 100%

http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/reviews/coda-2-review/

**BestGreek** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

Mini Coda 2 Review:

I’ve been using Coda 2 last night and all day today, I’ve been a full time web developer for the last 6 years so I’m looking at it from that point of view.

My current workflow is Transmit for FTP/SFTP and Sublime Text 2. Prior to ST2 I only used Smultron or vim. I basically prefer a sparse text editor with nice syntax highlighting.

Coda 2 is really great and will do well for many web developers and also some who only know a little html/css. I think if your an advanced developer who likes plugins and likes to tweaks things then Coda 2 probably isn’t for you. It’s a little light on keyboard short cuts and there aren’t any plugins right now. I doubt they will ever match what you can do in ST2.

My biggest gripe with Coda 2 is trying to work with more then 5 files at a time. I turn off the large icons at the top and use just text so each file name is a tab. Coda 2 truncates the file names so sometimes if your file name is more then 8 characters its not clear which is which. Also if you open more then 8 files then you have a horizontal scroll to view your files.

Terminal:
There isn’t anything wrong with it but I just prefer the Mac Terminal.app, its feels lighters and faster.

Mysql:
Same thing its ok but I prefer Sequel Pro because its faster and has more features.

Books:
I really don’t see the need for this. If I need to look something up I use google like most people.

Auto Complete:
I really don’t use this in any IDE (except XCode), I prefer to type things myself, but before I turned it off Coda 2 auto complete seemed weak.

Interface:
It’s pretty and fairly quick but it has a lot of controls and buttons all over the place. It feels like you have to use the mouse way to much. Also a lot of the controls are duplicates of others. There might be 3 ways to remove a panel using a button or menu.

Summary:
If your new to web developer this is probably a great tool to help you get your work done for small sites. If your more seasoned then Coda 2 might get in your way more then it helps. Panic does really great software and I’m sure they will keep updating and improving Coda 2. I just think I’m probably not there target audience for this product.

Extra:
If you don’t have it Transmit FTP/SFTP is really great and I highly recommend it. Also Prompt on the iphone/ipad is the best ssh client I’ve used so far on iOS. I just thought I should praise them a little since I’m not buying Coda 2. I did buy Diet Coda for the iPad which I do like for what it is.

**handycam** · January 13, 2016, 7:25am

The biggest problem I have with it is the insistence on making a “site” and then forcing you to update a site with FTP (or the other methods). Even Dreamweaver allows you to access a remote site over the filesystem. It forces you to work a certain way, which I find annoying. I would hope that for version 2 they would have relaxed that a bit, and allow you to create arbitrary projects like ST or Textmate (or even BBEdit).

Plus, as the NetTuts reviewer pointed out, there are a lot of windows that seem redundant. Files are available in many places, not sure which I would use when. The sidebar is kind of a joke. There are some useful things there, but I wish you could have more than one at a time in it.

It’s a definite improvment over 1, but it’s certainly not the “Aha” I got when I downloaded and started using ST2. There’s just so much more there.