Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Coda from Panic. Meh.

Coda is a new integrated web development application from the fine folks at Panic. I love their previous product, Transmit—so why don’t I give a whit for Coda?

First - I don’t like reviews on developer apps. Every developer works differently, as is evident in the code they write. It’s a personal experience that is hard to funnel into prescribed procedures, so it may well be that Coda just doesn’t work for me. Or maybe I need to consider applying some change to my existing style (yeah, right) but if you develop web sites, you do need to download it and give it a try.

I’ve been a user of Dreamweaver since version 1.0 was shown to a group of us at the Denver (D)TC. I don’t use it much except on the PC at work because on the Mac at home I can do better work with BBEdit and CSSedit. (Discolsure: I’ve been a betatester for CSSEdit from MacRabbit).

I want to like Coda, at least half as much as I liked Transmit. If that were true, this would have been a rave review, but Coda suffers from v1.0-itis in it’s current form. You can read everywhere reviews on Coda and what it’s like.

Let me touch on what I dislike:

  • Speed: It’s a bit pokey on a 1.67Mhz Powerbook, so I await the 1.1 version for tweaks.
  • Keyboard commands: Why, oh why do people think I want to use the mouse? Some developers prefer keyboard equivs. When beta testing version 2 of CSSEdit, I worked with the developer to implement OPT-TAB vertically through the editors and CMD-OPT up and down through the editor palette.
  • The CSS environment is oversized (compared to CSSEdit), the fonts are too large, lots of dead area in the CSS view - just not an efficient use of space on a powerbook.
  • No site-wide serch? Sorry?? BBedit or Jedit rules here…
  • Splitting the views is a cool idea, but only horizontally or vertically - not a combination of the two, which would allow a great deal more flexibility when it comes to displays of different sizes.
  • CSS3 elements are mixed-in with the CSS2 elements - if you were new to CSS, you might beat your head against a wall when your shadows don’t work on Firefox but do in Safari.  There should be some marking - even an asterisk.
  • The lack of keyboard launch for other browsers. OPT-B for preview in Safari? Isn’t that already internal? What about Firefox? (What I would REALLY like would be some means to target IE in Parallels. But first I’ll need a Intel powerbook…sigh.)

    • What do I like? Glad you asked:

  • Transmit integration. Schnappy!
  • CSS3 support
  • Integrated manuals (although I’d like it more if they were available offline - doesn’t anyone commute and code?)
  • Bonjour-enabled cooperative environment. It’s good to see someone other than SubEthaEdit take advantage of this.

    • It’s a good 1.0 release (read: it hasn’t crashed and taken my work with it) but I’m not writing checks quite yet. I don’t see how reaching for a mouse and clicking is faster than CMD-tabbing to another application, so any benefits just seem negated. If I could keep my fingers on the keyboard and alt/cmd-tab everywhere, I’d be happy with Coda indeed.

     

    Posted by admin on 04/25 at 01:30 AM
    Posted in: IT notes  
    Permalink

    Monday, April 02, 2007

    Today was the first day of school…

    For those keeping score, I’ve moved from Media Plaza to Ilse Media, in Amsterdam.

    Ilse Media positions itself as the Dutch Google, and it’s a good technical company in that regard. These are smart people here - fingers-crossed, I’m looking to jump in and do what I do best…

    Posted by admin on 04/02 at 02:41 PM
    Posted in:
    Permalink

    Monday, February 05, 2007

    Saftey first!

    For those of use who occasionally do programming contract work, here are some very relevant tips on protecting yourself, a must read especially if you’ve never done contract work before…

    The tone can be a bit defensive, but I think most of us have been there before. Often a good customer is one you can work flexibly with, but until that’s a known possibility it’s perhaps best to be just a little bit cautious…

    Posted by admin on 02/05 at 09:01 AM
    Posted in: IT notes  
    Permalink

    Tuesday, January 09, 2007

    Prognostications on MacWorld

    Here’s my bi-yearly foot-shoot. Watch in amazement as I guess MacWorld events wrongly…AGAIN!

    Okay - I’ve got a bad record on these things. Granted. So let’s give it one more shot, eh?

    I have 50 minutes before the big event. Logic tells me that I shouldn’t expect the line to go too straight when it comes to a Jobs foretelling of the future, so I’m just going to bullet what I think will happen, step by step:

  • Apple numbers - how they’ve grown, how many iTunes are downloaded, increased market share, etc
  • Apple at 30 - a look back to where we are now.
  • iLife 07 - given
  • iWork 07 - given
  • Apple beyond 30 - where we’ll be going. Either Ive or Schiller come on stage now.
  • Jobs announces a 2-year exit plan for himself, with Ive or Schiller taking the reigns. Will they duo?
  • Upgraded hardware for MacBookPros and screens (75%)
  • New Airports for 802.11n (80%)
  • 10.5 - demo new features, perhaps first look at new UI
  • Just one more thing - iPod Phone (80%), new iPod screen form factor (30%) and new relationships in telcom (80%) and movies/tv (80%)

  • Just one more little thing - iTV debuts. PVR functionality (50%) - syncs directly to iPod (30%) - can record TV (30%) or shift real DVDs to an personally-encrypted, trackable form and stores in iTunes (20%, but we can dream, huh?) - Streams movies from your iTunes-equipped Mac or PC (80%)

    So - off I go to a pub quiz instead; mostly because I can’t stand to wait but also because I’m single and thar-be women. Thar. Remember - there’s more to living than MacWorld!

    (UPDATED - wrong, wrong, wrong. It was the iPhone show, completely off the usual MacWorld script. Can I get a pass until the next real MacWorld?)

    Posted by admin on 01/09 at 10:04 AM
    Posted in: Gadgetry  
    Permalink

    Wednesday, September 13, 2006

    iTV - not for me…

    Perhaps I’m missing something, but why is iTV even important??

    I watched the Apple “Showtime” stream last night and I dropped the channel feeling a bit underwhelmed. Is Steve’s magic just not there anymore or am I getting better at picking through the rubble? My big question - “Why iTV when it’s not a solution to anything?”

    iTV is a nice box, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Mac fanboy from the word-“go”. I’ve just spent a major chunk of change over the years with Apple and I’m generally happy with neigh everything I’ve bought. I even spent a cool Franklin on upgrading my Newton MessagePad 2100 recently. I’m a sucker basically, so why didn’t I fall under Steve’s spell?

    Easy - it won’t record. You can’t hook it to a iPod. It’s an island.

    It’s an Apple lock-in for iTunes, for Macs in general (*if* they can actually move content into it - dvd collection, anyone?) and it’s playback only. I’ve been around long enough to know that any device that only plays-back content is version .5, or maybe 1.0. It’s a half-step. You probably can’t use DVDs (unless you rip them into iTunes - ha ha) and you can’t save downloaded content on external media without iTunes.

    To be successful, you need to bridge the content owners protectionist needs with the device owners want of flexibility and functionality. This box needs a dvd slot, or at least a recording function - SOMETHING to help it replace the Tivo or dvd player. Adding to the rat’s nest of wires with it’s own connections to my two, measly video inputs is not going to make it work in my system easily. For it to win, something else has to lose.

    But will I even let it come over the threshold? Single-direction, controlled-functionality devices are a user dead-end - even DVD players have to play existing content on CDs. Don’t forget how companies tries to push video CDs and audio DVDs versions. We collectively yawned and kept our existing versions. We’ve all been here before ? we all can see it coming. Why doesn’t Apple?

    Has Steve’s jump into Disney shifted his vision to the content-owner’s side? Is this a computer “cable-box” in disguise, ready to lock-in our neighborhood - car, den, living room - and our pocket-books as well?

    Posted by admin on 09/13 at 09:47 AM
    Posted in:
    Permalink
    Page 14 of 21 pages « First  <  12 13 14 15 16 >  Last »