Goodbye Dreamweaver, Hello Coda

I’ve been using Adobe Dreamweaver, ever since Adobe acquired Cyberstudio and renamed it Adobe GoLive nearly a decade ago. After purchasing Macromedia, the makers of Flash, Dreamweaver, Director, and Fireworks, Adobe abandoned GoLive and focused on future development of Dreamweaver and merged it into it’s CS series.

A few weeks ago I decided to give Coda from Panic Software a try, I’ve been using it ever since and found myself no longer needing to utilize the bulky and slow Dreamweaver. Years ago I’ve already gave up on using the built in FTP client of Dreamweaver and preffered to use Transmit and FTP application from Panic Software instead. I’ve also found myself using BBedit for hand-coding as well instead of Dreamweaver’s source-code view.

So why Coda? It has everything. FTP management, source code editor, CSS creation, live preview, shell access, and even the ability to edit files remotely. Best of all, it’s all wrapped an a unique single window tabbed interface. Simplicity at its best.

Managing my workflow while working on my laptop is important. Utilizing my screen space wisely with minimal effort is key to my productivity. While building content in Coda, only Photoshop and my email client are essential to me.