Switching From Dreamweaver to Coda

I had been using Adobe Dreamweaver for over 10 years and have always found it useful as a HTML/CSS code editor. When I first was learning to code, websites where all about using tables to create the layout (back in 2001). Using Dreamweaver to drag and drop a table (gasp) into the page was handy if I do say so myself as opposed to having to code up the table for complex layouts/grids.

On departing my “studies”  I remember one of my teachers saying “style sheets, learn style sheets”, something along those lines. CSS was a part of the web back then but it did not have the support by browsers for using it for creating more complex layouts while applying meaningful semantic markup as the majority of browsers today.

As a front-end web developer your learning curve never stops, you just keep building upon your skill set. I have always been happy with using Dreamweaver as a code editor and enjoyed the design view for easy selecting of text (something which Coda 2 does not do). Dreamweaver was really a default choice as that it came bundled with Adobe creative suite (previously was GoLive), but it covered my workflow needs.

Fast forward to 2014, the year I took on to start learning SASS, another learning curve. Instead of taking on learning terminal to set up SASS I opted for using CodeKit which is pretty nifty.

Now that I was set up for learning SASS I went to open a SASS file in Dreamweaver CS6 and that was the start of the turning point for me to start looking into another code editor as Dreamweaver CS6 does not handle SASS files out of the box (Dreamweaver CC does).

So this was the start of the migration from Dreamweaver to Coda 2.

Dreamweaver to Coda 2

I reviewed a few other code editors, eg TextMate, Sublime text 2 and Brackets though found Coda 2 to be a good bridging gap of simplicity though still user friendly enough to allow for easy workflow and would let me edit SASS files. It may be fickle reason for changing but in all simplicity that was it.

Coda 2 Love

Will add a list of features that I find enjoyable to use and make the everyday workflow easier when coding for HTML, SASS, CSS and PHP with Coda.

Quickly Jump to CSS in Preview

Works a bit like Firebug. Can be reviewing the website in live preview within Coda 2 then by highlighting an area you can then right click and choose to be taken to that specific piece of CSS in the working file.

Auto refresh of website preview while working with MAMP

Explain here