Nova

Panic, Coda's development team, launched a new macOS-specific code editor Nova. It can be considered "Coda 3", but because of the huge rewrite of the code, it adopts a brand new name.

I've experienced several beta versions. After it was officially released, I bought it at a discounted price and started using it. Here are some of my thoughts!

Like many others, I'm using VS Code. VS Code is very good and free. My team members are also using VS Code. It will be very difficult to change my VS Code usage habits. I've written about switching code editors before. in short:

1. You should not be too cumbersome in the initial use. That is, I can learn new features after the transition.
2. There must be some killer features to attract me.

I really like Prettier and Emmet. If I can't use them, I'll definitely give up. Fortunately, they are one of the most popular extensions.

Emmet's default expansion shortcut is Ctrl-E, but it doesn't seem to support Tab expansion (as far as I know), which is not ideal. It does have all the advanced features of Emmet, though, you can map them to any key press you want.

The key binding settings are great. I can map all the shortcut keys I'm used to using, such as mapping Command-T to "Quick Open", which is similar to the "Go to File..." feature in VS Code.

I have enabled nearly 30 VS Code extensions. They all add some handy features to me personally in VS Code. So far, I haven't found any missing features. If Nova's default behavior is excellent enough without much third-party tweaks (except for the two major extensions I mentioned earlier), it would be an added bonus for me. For example, I don't need plugins to rainbow my indentation because they are already rainbow!

I use "In-Project Find" at least a dozen times a day, so this feature has to be very efficient for me. My only problem so far is that it seems to get stuck on the "index file..." often (or feels stuck because the fan spins very fast). That said, it seems to return good search results.

Nova's macOS style is very strong. The scope limitations of the "In-Project Search" search results (for example, returning only *.js files) require creating a new search range. I could save that range with a custom name, which is a good idea, but it uses a lengthy, UI-heavy search range qualifying method in macOS Finder instead of an input field that can quickly enter *.js to qualify the results. In other words, it feels more like an emphasis on macOS style than practicality.

Another very obvious macOS style is right-clicking a folder to open a file browser: this is exactly the same as right-clicking a folder in Finder. In a way, this is reassuring because there are a lot of powerful features in this menu.

But it also lacks some features that may be very useful in the context. For example, I miss the option to "Open this folder in a terminal window".

The UI details are excellent. The choice of code font preferences is great. The minimap looks great, representing your code with small colored rectangles. The windows and editor themes are done very well. Every aspect of the UI is very elegant.

It is still the successor to Coda, so if you need SFTP to the remote server and edit it directly, the feature remains. I had to use it the other day to edit a file that I deliberately didn't put in git, so the feature is still handy at times.

Otherwise I would use Coda to do the job, and I don't even have to set it up for Nova, because Panic Sync has imported all the authentication information.

I do like it has a built-in browser (Safari, of course). I wonder if I can get into the habit of working in just one application without having to do too many window switching. This means file browsers, code editors, terminals, browsers, and DevTools.

It's a bit... cool to see so many things at once? I wish it had the option to use the built-in Chromium, as I'm more familiar with those DevTools. There are also some shortcomings, such as my tmux session does not respond to click events in the terminal.

Interestingly, Swift is not a built-in language. Given its macOS style, I thought Panic even wrote a part of Nova in Swift.

At the very least, you should check out Nova's login page and see all the CSS tips! The animated clip path on the image used to demonstrate Nova theme is very cool (I heard that the clip path animation in Safari is hardware accelerated, which is great!). It's just some images that are superimposed together, sharing the same animation, but staggering:

 <code>@keyframes wipe { 0% { clip-path: polygon(-50% 0%, 0% 0%, -50% 101%, -100% 101%) } 100% { clip-path: polygon(150% 0%, 200% 0%, 150% 101%, 100% 101%) } } /* ... */ img#interface1 { animation-delay: -17000ms; } img#interface2 { animation-delay: -15000ms; } img#interface3 { animation-delay: -13000ms; } img#interface4 { animation-delay: -11000ms; }</code>

But...this is simply too beautiful: Oh, and you also have to check out the use of display-p3 color format!

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