Cooking up Code with Espresso

1011 days ago in Articles, Contributors, Reviews by John Fuller | 1 Comment

Web development tools for the mac are vast and plenty, yet Espresso is the newcomer to the game, from software veteran MacRabbit software.

Within Espresso, websites are stored as ‘projects’, which include a folder hierarchy and Espresso project file. Existing websites can be transformed into Espresso projects by importing a folder.

The interface to Espresso is elegantly done, with a three-column design. On the left, there is an iTunes and Finder-esque sidebar, with the ‘Workspace’, ‘Project’, and ‘Publish’ categories. “Workspace’ contains the documents that you are currently working on, which is a new take on tabs. ‘Project’ contains the file and folder hierarchy for the website you’re working on, while ‘Publish’ is an FTP manager for uploading and transferring project files locally and server-side.

The central column within Espresso is the main coding window and workspace. To the left is a ‘Navigator’ pane, which shows the tags used in the current document. Below that, are the ‘Quick Publish’ and ‘Snippets’ panels. ‘Quick Publish’ is a toggle to turn on or off automatic uploading to a server, while ‘Snippet’s allows you to create frequently-used fragments of code for easily adding to documents.

Espresso also has many advanced features that speed up production time and increase usability. For instance, there is a find-and-replace function that allows you to search within a document for any text or code, and then, if requested, you can then replace found text with something else. There’s also a live preview window that shows real-time changes being made to a document.

For being a 1.0 product, Espresso is an excellent web development solution. There’s even added ability for users to expand Espresso by downloading sugars, which add support for scripting languages, and themes, which modify the look of the editor.

I haven’t used Espresso exclusively, but after receiving a license in the MacHeist bundle, I’m definitely going to use it on a new project. See more about Espresso and download a free 15-day trial from MacRabbit Software.