Panic Blog

It took longer than we wanted.

But the wait is more than worth it.

We’re excited to announce the arrival of Coda 2.5, a very significant update to our very popular web development app for OS X, available now — and free of charge for all Coda 2 owners.

We’ve spent a great deal of time working hard to deliver on the promise of Coda 2. We took a look at the feedback you’ve sent and the surveys you’ve filled out. And we’ve crafted an update that addresses most major requests for Coda 2. Sure, there’s still lots more we want to do in the future. But this is a big one.

What’s New

Where do we start?

Coda 2.5 is significantly faster. Syntax highlighting is up to 10 times faster. Symbol parsing is also up to 10 times faster. You can feel the speed increase. It also looks nicer. We refreshed the UI completely — cleaned up the icons, spruced up every corner — and if you’re running OS X Yosemite, you’ll even get a 10.10-updated interface designed expressly for you.

There are great editor improvements. Vertical indentation guides. A customizable column guide. New color-coded tabs, traditional and visual.  It has Panic Sync. Your sites, including passwords and private keys, will easily and securely sync to Coda on all of your devices — and will even sync with Diet Coda 1.6 and Transmit iOS. (You can learn about Panic Sync here.)

Plug-ins are significantly more powerful. We have a plug-in browser built-in to the Preferences. And users can now write “Sidebar” plugins that add brand new tools to Coda’s sidebar. Even better, Sidebar plugins can be written in HTML, significantly lowering the barrier of entry to extending Coda!

Then, a big one: the local indexer/site-wide autocomplete. Coda 2.5 can now optionally scan your Local Folder and build an index of functions, classes, and variables. So the autocomplete menu will now include your own code — not just the standards. It’s a massive speed boat for your code. I meant to say speed boost, but speed boat is what came out, and let’s just roll with it.

And publishing tracks external changes. This is big news for anyone who works with SCSS or LESS.

In short, there are hundreds of fixes and improvements — here are the full release notes. Or you can learn more about Coda in general.

Coda is still only $99 for new users, a price that’s affordable to any web developer. If you already own Coda 2, the 2.5 update is free.

How To Get It

If you bought Coda 2 from us directly, Coda 2.5 should auto-update over the next few days! That’s it. If you’re impatient, just download from our site and replace your current copy.

What about Mac App Store customers? As you may know, Coda 2.5 is not available in the Mac App Store. (One of the major causes for Coda 2.5’s delay was wrestling with sandboxing.)

But don’t worry. We’ve made Mac App Store migration painless:

• Download Coda 2.5
• Launch it. It should detect your Mac App Store copy and pop-up a migration dialog.
• Enter your name and e-mail, and we’ll e-mail you a personalized Coda 2 serial number.
• Use that serial number to unlock Coda 2, now and in the future. It’s yours to keep.

(In some cases we might not be able to automatically detect your Mac App Store copy, and you might need to go to the Mac App Store “Purchases” tab, redownload Coda 2, then launch Coda 2.5. Once migration is done you can delete the older Coda.)

Also, A Free Book

We’ve often wished there was a casual guide to the full power of Coda that we could give to new (or existing!) users. So we made one. It’s available in the iBookstore, and it’s completely free.

Enjoy

We’re extremely happy to give Coda users this fresh update. Coda 2 was a great success for Panic and, in a way, this update is one way for us to say thanks.

Enjoy it. And show us what you make with Coda!

(Basically everyone at Panic is involved in Coda, and everyone did amazing work, but Coda 2.5 truly owes its existence to Wade and Will, the masterminds behind Coda for many years. They’re overdue for a break — but until then, thank you both for always working hard to make this app great!)

It’s amazing. Three years ago, we released Prompt, a nice, clean, powerful SSH client for iOS. And ever since then, you’ve told us your Prompt stories — fixing a dead server from a beach! Tweaking a webpage in the middle of a client meeting! — and we’ve loved every minute of it. Putting the power of a full-featured SSH app in your pocket (or on your iPad!) has been more fulfilling than we ever expected.

Well, now it’s time to take Prompt to the next level. We’ve been working very hard on Prompt 2, a brand new app!

To start, Prompt 2 adds Panic Sync, our already-proven and secure way to sync your servers, passwords, and keys between Prompt on all your devices. This is a big deal. That means servers follow you from your iPhone to your iPad, effortlessly. (Panic Sync doesn’t yet allow you to sync between, say, Transmit and Prompt, but that’s something theoretically possible we hope to add in the future, and one of the advantages of running our own sync service.)

As you can see, we also gave Prompt a fresh new look — a little bit sleeker, a little bit more cybernetic — and of course we made sure it was ready for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. And man, the dramatic, black interface looks absolutely incredible on an iPhone 6. There are lots of nice visual touches.

Another way to save server-time? Clips. Now you can save your frequently-used commands (or text snippets) and insert them at any time with a tap. And yes, your Clips sync between your devices as well!

There’s a ton more. We’ve expanded Prompt’s private key handling abilities. You can now generate private keys in Prompt, making it very easy to set up a new, secure connection. It’s easier to switch between open connections. And there’s also Touch ID support so you can secure Prompt, and your sensitive servers, with your just fingerprint.

All in all, it’s a very nice update to a very nice app.

Check out Prompt 2 in the App Store and let us know how it helps you!

Prompt 2 is $9.99, and available right now. It will automatically import your data from Prompt 1.

Of course, we’re not done. We’ve already wrapped up Prompt 2.0.1 (submitting today!) and will be on the lookout for your bugs and ideas. See something weird? E-mail us! Have a cool idea? Let us know! We’re on it — we want Prompt 2 to be the best SSH app for iOS, period.

(Like all Panic products, Prompt 2 was a team effort, born under Dave, with Neven’s excellent design, Kenichi’s icon, Ashur’s testing and guidance, Logan’s sync magic, and more. But the true champion of Prompt 2, the one who did the actual work of implementing all the new features and shipping the app, was Heather, who is the best. Thank you!)

Some ideas don’t make sense until suddenly they do.

Ever since it became possible to write third-party iOS apps, we’ve received the occasional request to bring Transmit to iOS and, to be honest, it never made much sense to us. That is, until this year’s WWDC.

Up until that point, iOS apps had very limited reach in terms of access to other apps’ documents, so we struggled to find an answer to our time-honored litmus test of “what would we use this for?” Was an app that simply allowed you to transfer files in and out of itself particularly useful?

Especially with many highly-regarded file storage and document reader apps already on the App Store, it seemed like our chances of carving a worthwhile niche were tiny at best. We experimented with the idea a little and ultimately shelved it.

Then came the introduction of iOS 8. It’s an exciting update for users, and a really exciting release for developers, not least because of a little something called App Extensions. By utilizing App Extensions, Transmit could effectively provide standard file transfer protocols for any iOS 8 app. Overnight, this idea that made very little sense suddenly made all the sense in the world.

And so, after a bit of a mad dash to get it ready in time for iOS 8’s debut, we’re proud to introduce Transmit iOS. It’s the world’s best file transfer client, now seamlessly integrated right into your iPhone or iPad.

Browsing a directory listing

Not just a pretty face, Transmit iOS shares the same rock-solid engine as the Mac version, so you’ll find all of our currently supported protocols: FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, and S3-compatible services such as DreamObjects.

Every compatibility and performance tweak that has made its way into the Transmit engine over the last 16 years (!) is present and accounted for. Future improvements and fixes will make their way to both the Mac and iOS versions.

Browsing available servers and connection options

Previewing a remote image

On iOS, Transmit gets a fresh new look — in perfect harmony with iOS 8’s style but with a bit of our own flair. In the Transmit app, you can store, download, and upload files as with any pre-iOS 8 file manager, but it’s the way Transmit extends your whole iOS experience that’s the best part.

Let’s start with sharing.

You’re probably already familiar with the Share button in iOS. If you’re, say, looking at a photo, you can tap the Share button and send the photo by email, iMessage, AirDrop, and so on. With Transmit iOS installed, you can also now send that photo (or other document) to any FTP, SFTP, WebDAV or Amazon S3 server, right from Photos.

In other words, any iOS app that supports the Share sheet magically gains support for these protocols when you install Transmit iOS.

Sharing photos with Transmit iOS

Without leaving the app you’re in, you can bring up a full Transmit interface within that app, navigate to a particular folder, and send your file. Then Transmit goes away and you’re right back where you were, without any cumbersome app switching. That’s a big deal, and a first for iOS.

But wait, there’s more!

New in iOS 8 is the Document Picker. The Document Picker is an extensible way for iOS apps to open a document from an outside source.

Transmit iOS hooks in here too, which means — you guessed it — any iOS 8 app that supports the Document Picker can now open files remotely from your FTP, SFTP, WebDAV or Amazon S3 server, without leaving that app.

(You can even re-save the document, and the changes will go back to the server it came from!)

Concerned about security? If you’d like, Transmit iOS can restrict access to your servers by requiring Touch ID authentication. That means you don’t have to remember or re-enter your server password each time.

We think Transmit iOS is a fantastic new way for advanced users to manage files on their iPhone, iPad, and beyond. Since it’s a brand new 1.0 product, we’ll be looking forward to your feedback to help us steer it in the right direction.

Please give Transmit iOS a try and let us know what you think!

Also worth noting: Transmit iOS is currently only $9.99 for a limited time. If you want to get in on this incredible new tool, we suggest doing it quickly!

(One last note: many people here were involved in making Transmit iOS, including years of FTPKit care and feeding from Wade and Will, and Neven’s immaculate design work, but I wanted to specifically send a big thank you to all-around Panic good guy Logan, who worked tirelessly to make Transmit iOS happen. Thanks so much, Logan!)