Coda vs Espresso & CSSEdit Updated

After slowly working on my own website and working on a redesign for a client (and friend) of mine Consumer Credit & Debt Counseling I’ve been experimenting with Espresso after using Coda for a fairly long period of time. It was not a decision that I came to lightly given my familiarity with Coda. But after experiencing some slow FTP transfers and sluggish CSS editing it was time to evaluate some other programs.

CSSEditor is was initially drew me to MacRabbit, who also makes Espresso. I downloaded it, used the stand-alone CSS editor and the HTML editor easily and also upload the slow file in half the time that Coda needed.

At the time I was very impressed and intrigued by Espresso’s extendability with “Sugars.” I impetuously purchased it and experienced buyer’s remorse over a different FTP issue. When it comes to editing HTML they are about on par. I don’t like the way that Espresso manages Projects, specifically what files are available for each project. I’d like to keep the folders and files seperate but it looks like Espresso just wants to dump everything into a single folder. After sorting myself out the projects and files are logically arranged and compartmentalized. Espresso will auto-upload your files automatically when you save. The FTP program can only handle a few files at a time. If you are doing a backup for a client use FileZilla or a different FTP client.

In the end Coda’s FTP & CSS Editor were so bad that I bought the bundle of CSSEdit & Espresso. FTP is faster than Coda but doesn’t work well trying to drag and drop from within its own window. It keeps switching on me. I switched back to FileZilla today just to upload a few files.

I’m starting to wonder if I was too hasty in condemning Coda for it’s FTP speed deficiency, Espresso’s FTP interface has been giving me trouble. CSSEdit is worth it, but this FTP “solution” isn’t very elegant, I want something simple. Hopefully I can sort this out, otherwise I may be asking for a refund and go crawling back Coda.Although FileZilla is great on my PC at work I don’t like the interface that it has on OS X. I don’t really need it that often to go looking for a replacement just yet.