I have a great article i have been contemplating on writing, and a lot of beginner site builders will find this resourceful. This article is about the great app that is Coda for Mac OS X (pronounced os ten not os eks). Coda is the one window solution for HTML and CSS. The reason i say this is because the workflow that it creates is so fluid and seamless i wouldn't replace it for anything not even an adobe product.

Coda's workflow is so fluid because the user interface. This app has multiple tabs at the top. The first one is "sites". "Sites" shows you a most recent thumbnail of your websites you have up and running on the web. The next tab is "editor". Of corse its not hard to figure out that "editor" is a HTML/CSS text editor. The third tab is called "preview" which is a window that generates your HTML/CSS code to show you what it would look like on a website. The next tab is "CSS". This tab is supposed to be a simplified way to edit CSS, but i don't think its quite to that point yet. The final tab is "books". It shows reference books you can choose to view for HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP.

The sites tab has to be one of the most interesting things ive seen in any app up to date that i have used. Mostly because it brings you to the current view of your website. You can also have many websites under this tab with customizable settings.

One of the most note worthy thing to bring up about Coda is the HTML/CSS text editor. When starting an opening tag like <table> the editor automatically adds the closing tag like </table> automatically after you write the opening tag. The second thing that makes working in Coda a cinch is the left pane in it. Coda has a pane to the left that resembles the Finders pane where you can search through your desktop and/or user files to locate your HTML/CSS files in Coda. Finally the last but definitely not the least and most helpful feature is the auto complete text feature. The auto complete feature anticipates what words you could possibly be in the middle of typing so you can spend less time typing and more time working on your website.

The CSS tab is not quite there yet, but its a good start that i think the team needs to make more "noob friendly" unless you an expert than id recommend staying away from this tab all together and make css text files that are easier to get the hang of.

Another thing to consider is price. Is the hefty price tag of some apps worth it? Also what are your needs in terms of usability. If Coda does seem like something you may be interested in or if you have anymore questions feel free to ask.

Tags: CSS, Coda, HTML, Web, developement, site

0 members like this

Comment

You need to be a member of Geeks to add comments!

Join Geeks

Comment by Karl on December 18, 2010 at 9:39pm: That will work as well if you don't want to host your own content at home as well. I had done the same thing all those years ago. Nowadays I find it easier to just ftp it over to one of my servers locally or just copy what I am working on a usb key and just put it into the location required where I am hosting it on the server itself. Plus the free hosted sides are small than what you can do with a spare computer and a large hard drive.

Comment by Justin Martin on December 14, 2010 at 11:16am: If you don't wanna go that route (setting up Joomla, Mysql, PHP, Wordpress, and Dyndns) I recommend www.webstarts.com or www.webs.com or www.wix.com they are all great Beginner website builders, and they are free! No HTML knowledge needed anyone can make a website using these providers.

Comment by Karl on December 12, 2010 at 10:17pm: Joomla, php, wordpress, and mysql are all free on the Internet. Just need to Google it and download it to your computer.And install it on a secondary computer. Thats what I did over here. They have the downloads available for both windows environment and for the linux versions as well. So if your using a windows machine or a linux varient to create your web server. Then you can go this route. I'm using my main machine with ultimate edition 2.6 that have Apache on it. And if your on a windows machine IIS is easily installed through the windows components.

For Joomla = http://www.joomla.org/

For Mysql = http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/#downloads

For PHP =http://www.php.net/

For Wordpress =http://wordpress.org/

For linking your home server after you properly set it up to go through your router at home. you'll need this for a maximum of 2 webinks you can have for free.

For DynDNS = http://www.dyndns.com/

There the leg work done for you.

Comment by Alex Ferreira on December 12, 2010 at 2:50pm: So, how much is this program, free? link to download?

Comment by Karl on December 11, 2010 at 9:07pm: Myself when I started in 2003 I had used a free webserver sited to create my web page with dreamweaver MX. Now. within the last few months I just used a computer at home with windows server, IIS, PHP, mysql, and wordpress or Joomla CMS. And went that way. Since I had the hardware and all that. Was easy to do took me about 2 hours to get everything set up on it with all the patches. And used dyndns to link it through to my server at home. With two servers at home I can update either of them locally and let my friends, family and relatives know about it.

I find it easier for letting people who know if they want to learn how to program in html make it easier with a second computer at home that can be used as a home server and test it out to make sure that it can work with it. IIS is readily available on Windows XP, Vista, and on indows 7 in the windows ad on features. Just a matter of putting it together and matching it up.

Karl

Comment by joshua blevins on December 10, 2010 at 9:54am: eh im new to this so its not as good as id like it to be. i just started off creating sites too i have the code for my site just not the domain name yet.

Comment by Anthony (TheDataZoo) on December 10, 2010 at 4:20am: (sort of got your article :D)LOL i just use a program it's adobe dream-weaver.

RSS

Badges | Report an Issue | Terms of Service