Hi, I'm Scott Williams a multimedia designer based in Southampton. 72 Circles is my online portfolio & blog.

About a month ago I was looking around Twitter when I came across a tweet by Jon Hicks. The tweet contained a link to sign up to beta test, an application created by Mac software developers Panic. I signed up but quickly forgot all about it. A week later an email landed in my inbox containing an application called Coda, since then Coda has had a permanent place in my dock.

Coda is simply a web developers dream. If you code for the web you know that in order to get the job done your going to need several applications. For me these applications consist of CSSEdit, Transmit, TextWrangler and Safari. Well now I normally just have one application running, Coda. Coda is a one window web development application that will allow you to edit, upload and preview your web page by simply moving from tab to tab. Today Coda was released for everyone to enjoy so go download a copy.

I have been beta testing Coda for a while now and it has all the foundations of a great application. Coda is the most stable and fully 1.0 application I have seen in a long time. When you first download the application you may think it looks good but it's not until you fully customise the way in which the windows are split, that you can start to enjoy the true power of it. Take a look at some of the screen shots on the Panic website to get an idea of the ways you can split each panel. After you have customised the Interface to your own needs you should find that Coda really does speed up your workflow.

At the moment I am half way through a full switch to Coda for all my web development. But there are still a couple of features that the CSS panel lacks which stop me from switching completely.

1) The lack of folders in the CSS styles editor, this has become a feature that I have become so dependent on while working within CSSedit. It is a small feature but one that really speeds up my workflow.

2) The other feature that I would like to see added is the option to control focus of the editor, using the CSS WYSIWYG editor. Currently if you split the CSS WYSIWYG editor and the text based editor you can get something that resembles that of CSSedit. The problem comes when you click on a style in the CSS editor, the focus of the text based editor does not move. This means that you are left to scroll and look manually for each style.

As Coda matures I hope to see these features added. At the moment I am trying to use it for all my web development but every now and again I still find myself opening CSSedit. As it stands for me it has replaced Transmit, TextWrangler and Safari but it is going to have to do that little bit more to stop me from lunching CSSedit. Overall it has improved my workflow and I can't wait to see what the guys at Panic have planned for it next.