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Coda Seestyles, Colorful Syntax

February 5th, 2009 · 19 Comments

A few months ago, I switched to Panic’s Coda for all my web development needs. I love it. So I made myself some colorful Seestyles (it’s a style that you see, get it?), which I’ll share with you now.

Download the latest version: Coda-Seestyles-0.9.0.zip

Coda Seestyle

The quick rundown about why these styles are so great.

  • PHP and JS are warm colors
  • HTML and CSS are cool colors
  • Comments are all the same color (across syntax)
  • Not too bright, not too dull
  • Easy to see PHP amidst HTML
  • Shows spaces, tabs, and hard returns subtly

What’s with all the colors?

I can already hear someone saying “all you need is black and white.” That is true, that’s the essentials to editing text. A good friend once said to me “life’s too short to eat only grape jelly.” And he’s right. You’ve been eating the grape jelly of black and white syntax coloring, and until you’ve tried my strawberry-orange-marmalade-guava syntax coloring, well… you haven’t lived.

It’s not for everyone. I realize that. I’m not suggesting it’s the best. But it works for me. I’ve been using this theme for the last 2 months, so I can honestly say, that it does a great job for me, and the styles have been honed.

Warm to cool, back-end to front-end

The markup and style is in cool colors (purple through green) and the Javascript and PHP make up the warm colors (red through yellow). Making it very clear [to me] which language I’m working with. Also, spotting a snippet of PHP in a sea of HTML is a cinch.

I use PHP-HTML as my default syntax mode. Most of the code I write is mixed with some degree of PHP. The other styles are mocked off of the PHP-HTML Seestyle. The current version (0.9.0) includes CSS, PHP-HTML and JS styles. I’ll trickle the color coding through the rest of the available syntax modes in due time. HTML being the first of the next round of updates.

PHP-HTML styles
PHP-HTML Seestyles

CSS styles
CSS Seestyles

Javascript styles
Javascript Seestyles

Download the latest version: Coda-Seestyles-0.9.0.zip

Enjoy, or don’t.

Tags: Web · Tools · CSS · Coda · Development · HTML · PHP · Javascript · Seestyles

What do you think?

19 comments

  • 1 Marcel Feb 5, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    Bookmarking this for when I try out Coda

  • 2 Corey Feb 5, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    Thanks for giving me something new to read while I sit in this boring community college. I agree with the use of colors for coding. It’s mind stressing to read though code that all looks the same! Your guava color might be my new favorite color, if it exists.

  • 3 Jason Robb Feb 5, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    @ Marcel, do give it a go. But, it’s only a 14-day trial, so time your testing carefully. I find the best way to do a trail is to actually have a reason to try it first. Used to install a trial, let it expire, and then some days later return to find myself trail-less and wishing I would have saved it. Thanks for dropping by!

    @ Corey, lol you’re funny. But seriously, it’s so boring to look at black and white code. I’m actually happy to fire up Coda every day. The colors are inspiring, if you ask me.

  • 4 Saeed Jabbar Feb 13, 2009 at 1:59 am

    Love coda and love your color scheme. I’m installing it right now since its so easy on the eyes.

  • 5 Jason Robb Feb 13, 2009 at 6:40 pm

    Thanks Saeed, let me know how you like it.

  • 6 Adam Harris Feb 22, 2009 at 11:25 am

    Loving the colour scheme, I’m a recent converter from Zend Studio to Coda.

    Only thing missing for me is a matching Smarty scheme :-)

    Cheers,

    Adam

  • 7 Andy Bright Mar 1, 2009 at 12:08 pm

    Just what I’ve been lookin for.

  • 8 JiDai Mar 1, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Nice. Thanks.

  • 9 Simon Douglas Mar 2, 2009 at 12:52 am

    Really like the colour schemes, however, I must be doing something wrong, as I click on Import and select the file and then nothing changes.

  • 10 Marc Jun 11, 2009 at 1:30 am

    @Simon; the same thing happened to me. Clicking the ‘Use inverted colors’ checkbox did the trick.

  • 11 Errol Jun 24, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    In case anyone was wondering, the .seeStyle extension comes from SubEthaEdit, which is the text engine behind Coda.

  • 12 Coda | AliasBDI Jun 29, 2009 at 5:44 am

    […] Coda Seestyles, Colorful Syntax […]

  • 13 Daniel Jul 19, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    Just a note -

    I actually like it :P

    You contributed to my world in a small way, and for that I’m grateful to you :-)

  • 14 hi Aug 3, 2009 at 5:44 am

    do you have any ideea if coda supports transparency of the window (like for example espresso does ?)

  • 15 marcos Aug 10, 2009 at 5:05 am

    Thanks indeed mate. I messed up my Coda, and wasn’t in the mood to make this colour thing again. also, your set are terrific!

  • 16 Jason Robb Aug 21, 2009 at 7:21 am

    Thanks folks, glad you’re enjoying it! =)

    Cheers,

    Jason

  • 17 Rydgel Aug 27, 2009 at 3:25 pm

    I’m using it right now, it’s perfect :)

    Thank you Jason.

  • 18 Jesper Haug Karsrud Aug 28, 2009 at 6:32 am

    Wow, this is awesome, I love it! Used it as a base for the pure HTML mode as well, and it looks really, really good! Way to go, been looking for a good theme for a very long time, there really aren’t many good ones around, and I would rather focus on my coding than working with the colors, but sometimes you just have to do a litte work yourself :)

    Good job!

  • 19 Ian Mulvany Feb 23, 2010 at 5:58 am

    any tips on turning off CDATA hilighting?

    I’m trying to code up some open social gadgets and all of the container code is coming up as comments, which is annoying,

    thanks!