Panic has released Coda, an all-encompassing web development tool. This tiny little application includes a text editor, ftp, css editor, preview window, terminal, and reference materials all in one application.
From Panic's website:
"So, we code web sites by hand. And one day, it hit us: our web workflow was wonky. We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, running queries in Terminal, using a CSS editor, and reading references on the web. “This could be easier,” we realized. “And much cooler."
And boy are they right. I've only spent about an hour with Coda, but so far it's living up to the "easier" and "cooler" part of Panic's description.
Just last night I spent a couple of hours doing some web development on my iMac. I had BBEdit, CSSEdit, Camino, Safari, Terminal, Transmit all opened and spread around my screen. If it weren't for Mac OS X's Expose, it would have been an unbearable mess of windows. With Coda, I could have been working with one window.
There is something to be said for the Mac aesthetic of mono-tasking applications, but Coda takes that philosophy in a different directly. Web development is "the task," so using one application for this task makes perfect sense.
After I play around with the application some more I'm sure I'll find some downsides, but for right now it's definitely worth checking out.
