My Diet Coda review

Every developer working with the brand new Coda 2 from Panic Inc. knows Diet Coda, the Coda 2 iPad version, that’s why i decided to buy and test it. I’ve been working with Coda for a long time now, and all i have to say is that it’s great, really great.

In fact I’m using it every single day. And that’s true, when the sun is shining (note: this is quiet unusual here in France!) i would like to be able to work outside, on the beach, on a boat, in a forest… That’s one of the reasons that motivated me to buy an iPad and Diet Coda.

First start: bug!

So i started why Diet Coda, i bought on the App Store and installed it the first day it came on the market… i wasn’t able to make it work on my New iPad. I had to wait a few days, because Diet Coda wasn’t working with my native language: French. Okay… that’s not a good beginning, but i know it’s a the versy first Diet Coda version, bugs can be acceptable…

A quick fix, but no iCloud sites synchronization

A few days later, there was a fix, and i started testing Diet Coda. First thing to notice: sites are not automatically linked from Coda 2 to Diet Coda, that means that if i want to work (online only) with Diet Coda, i have to re-insert all FTP logins and passwords for every single site… wow! I only added one, and sent a tweet to Panic that replied me it was just a matter of time before adding sites synchronization via iCloud. I’ll wait until there then…

A beautiful interface

Once connected to my FTP i started playing a bit with avalaible features: full line zoom, optimized keyboard, chmod edition, and all normal features we need for files edition. Well everything works perfectly! [highlight_blue]Until today i never had any more bug[/highlight_blue]. And furthermore: it’s really beautiful! But it’s not a simple editor: search and replace is really powerful, and the must is clips insertion, this is really nice. You can in just a few clicks insert a lot of predetermined content… that’s so useful!

Using a bluetooth keyboard

After a few days playing with Diet Coda, i decided to buy an external bluetooth keyboard because i found a bit hard to write directly on the screen: the fact to use the screen keyboard reduces a lot the space for code, and when using an external keyboard you can view your code in nearly the whole screen. And yes, i definitely recommend using such a tool, it’s much easier to write. By the way, there are nice bluetooth iPad keyboards, i bought one that is also a strong iPad cover that really protects the iPad.

Conclusion: 5 stars!

To sum up all i can say is that Diet Coda is one of the best code edition tool on iPad (i tried FTPonTheGo and some others) and when iCloud synchronization will be available, it will be really awesome! So, trust me, this app really worth it!

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