When comparing Coda 2 vs Codelobster, the Slant community recommends Coda 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript IDEs or editors?” Coda 2 is ranked 30th while Codelobster is ranked 39th. The most important reason people chose Coda 2 is:
Coda 2 comprises all you would expect from an IDE: it supports multiple languages (including all the standards); it performs autocomplete of project names, as well as language functions; it supports SVN and GIT; it has good support for plugins (or you can write your own); it has a configurable editor; and it has a built-in preview.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Real IDE with all the benefits
Coda 2 comprises all you would expect from an IDE: it supports multiple languages (including all the standards); it performs autocomplete of project names, as well as language functions; it supports SVN and GIT; it has good support for plugins (or you can write your own); it has a configurable editor; and it has a built-in preview.
Pro Advanced support for all popular frameworks
Including Laravel, Bootstrap. jQuery, WordPress, Drupal, Yii and so on.
Pro Special support for JQuery through the jQuery plugin
The jQuery support (when you install the jQuery plugin) is great. It adds function definitions so that autocomplete works as intended. Furthermore, the IDE knows about the logic of the different libraries and frameworks and can understand that $(this)
refers to a jQuery instance.
Pro Great HTML, CSS and JavaScript autocomplete
Codelobster has great HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP autocomplete
Pro Free version available
There is a free version available for download; it comes with a lot of features that you would find in an IDE.
Pro Portable option available
Codelobster IDE offers a lightweight, portable option.
Pro Hovering over a CSS property shows you which browsers are supported by that property
This is a really nice feature as it immediately shows you the browsers that support a certain CSS property. Of course, it does not beat actual testing, but it's still a nice feature that saves developers a lot of time.
Cons
Con Defective UI
There are several things in Coda that simply don't work, and never have. For instance, the root directory for your local and remote files is simply not honored. For every project, you can specify the root directory for its files. But when you open the project in Coda, it doesn't go there. The file browser just shows whatever the last directory was that you were using, and will write files to the wrong place. Thus, it defeats the purpose of setting the home directory in the first place.
Also, splitting the editor doesn't work. If you've done any programming, you know how important it is to be able to view two files simultaneously. Coda fails to do this, with a bizarre insistence on making the two panes dependent on each other.
Con Support for Mac and commercial use only
Coda 2 is only available on Mac (even though that does make it a native app, meaning its much faster). Coda 2 costs $99 after the 30 day free trial is up.
Con No XDebug
If you also write PHP, there's no XDebug support available.
Con You need to sign up to get a free serial number for the free version
In order to use the free version of Codelobster, you have to sign up and get a free account. This is done to help stopping piracy, but it's still pretty jarring when all you want to do is install a program.
Con Expensive
For the Pro version (which includes all the available plug-ins), the cost is $99.95. The lite version (without plugins) is $39.95.
