Nice review Anthony, I’m going to have to check it out. I’ve given up on using Coda mostly, but with Expression Engine syntax hints, Espresso could be sweet.

Excellent review! The only reason I have not purchased Espresso as of today is the “slim” hope that macheist.com will unlock it!

Thanks for the write-up. Looks really nice.

@Mathew you may want to check this out http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/51330/#249899.

Excellent write up Anthony. I tried Espresso very quickly and the general editing capabilities just didn’t feel quite as nice as TextMate - well the first thing I did was tried “block selection” which I use all the time in TM, and that didn’t work as well IMHO.

It certainly looks like a very nice app though, with an amazing amount of polish, especially for a version 1 release. I’m just so stubborn about changing my workflow.

I’ll have to give it more of a chance… already got my MacHeist bundle, so hopefully it’ll get unlocked!

Aha! So you did the EE sugar. Very nicely done sir! I’ve been using it since the private beta as well and am loving my freedom from Dreamweaver bloat. Can’t wait to see where it’s going!

Nice writeup Anthony. I’ve been using Coda for quite a while now, alogn with Textmate for most of the module / extension programing part. I’ve given Espresso a try, but for now, Coda just fits my workflow better. I’m lookin forward though how Espresso evolves in the future, it might be worth switching some time.

For your EE work I’ll make you a monument ! I have been looking for soooo long for something like this. Finally it’s here! Thank you sooo much. 

A quick question: in Coda it’s possible to do a live preview, which is really very nice. See http://expressionengine.com/blog/entry/live_preview_with_coda_and_other_ides/

Is it possible to do something similar in Espresso?

Fantastic work, thank you.

The _only_ think holding me back from diving head first into Espresso is its inability to show “hidden” files (files prefixed by a period). I have too many hidden EE templates that Espresso simply will not show me.

I have quickly tested it, and was not convinced at all to abandon Coda for Espresso.
But your enthusiasm and your EE sugar make me want to give it a second thought ^__^

Just had a quick look at the site with the intention to try/buy, but its Leopard only *sigh*

Oh well, maybe later :)

Espresso sounds OK, but I’m just not sure it will even come close to rivaling TextMate’s editing (not just the snippets). Duplicating lines/blocks with a quick key command, columnar editing, and other little things that I’m very used to.

Also, with the ExpressionEngine bundle for TextMate, I can highlight any core EE tag and hit Ctrl-E and I go right to the EE docs for that tag…invaluable. (Can your Sugar do similar?)

Unlike Mark Hout, I prefix all my hidden templates with an underscore, so I won’t have the “hidden templates not showing” problem.

Nice write up, and I’m sure your Espresso Sugar is really sweet *ahem*. I’ll probably give all this a test-drive soon.

Total noob to all this and nothing seems to be happening when I double-click on your Sugar.  big ExpressionEngine fan - would love to get this to work - but can’t seem to figure it out.

@Jim - If you’ve got the latest Espresso, 1.0.1, you should just be able to double click the sugar and it will install. If you’ve downloaded it from GitHub, rename the unzipped folder to ‘expressionengine.sugar’ and then double click.

After that, just restart Espresso. If your template isn’t automatically detected as EE, then go to View > Language > ExpressionEngine.

I’ll probably change the way it’s structured on Github so when you download it the sugar is right there :)

Thanks - I figured that part out (renaming to .sugar) and that seemed to work.

The only problem is that now the theme doesn’t work for me.  Made the folder (as explained in Coffee House) and dragged the .css in there.  I can pick it in preferences - but it doesn’t do anything.  In fact, all it did was change all the cool EE color stuff you did with the Sugar, it changed all the text back to basic black on white.

I have the latest Espresso version.  Am I missing a step?

@Jim - For some reason Espresso will reset the Language to PHP for some reason and disregard the highlighting of the sugar (even with the exp:template tag in the top). Kind of caught me off guard a couple of times.

Everyone make sure to get MacHeist so we all get Espresso for cheap!

Espresso looks interesting, but i probably won’t invest time in checking it out more than a few minutes. Like i did for TextMate or Coda. They are all great apps (from what i’ve seen and mostly what i’ve heard), but i’m focusing my learning efforts on multiplatform software. Mac OS X is nice, but it’s not without its faults, and i just happen to prefer the Linux+Gnome environment (namely Ubuntu but it could be another Gnome-based distribution).

So i run OS X on my iMac, Ubuntu on my laptop, and ActiveState’s Komodo Edit on both. It’s a nice and powerful editor, not as great as Coda or Espresso UI-wise, but it’s quite good.

Oh man. I would already be grateful to you for the ExpressionEngine Sugar, but then you had to go and port the Blackboard theme from TextMate—which is, I’m not proud to admit, one of the key reasons I’ve been reluctant to switch to a different editor. THANK YOU KIND SIR.

Same issue for me still - downloaded .css from the link.  Dropped into the Themes folder, selected in Preferences but all it does is turn everything black on white.

Switched Language Pref. to ExpressionEngine - same thing - no change.  Am I missing a step?

Not being able to see hidden files on the FTP is a pretty huge drawback. Of course you can use your own naming for “hidden” templates in EE (@masuga), but that’s not only working around something that should be in Espresso in the first place. Let’s hope they add that, for now, Coda and Textmate.

This might be the push I need to give Espresso a fair chance vs. Coda! Thanks for a good review. I’ll be trying out your EE Sugar!

Your EE plugin makes me want to give this app a second chance!

The EE Sugar really slowed my copy of espresso to a crawl so I had to uninstall it. OK, I’m on an old G5 1.8Ghz iMac but it was ridiculously slow.

Espresso’s plugin system needs a bit of work still I think.

It figures Espresso and your EE sugar come along so close to the launch of a web site where both would have been invaluable.

I have the same big issue as Mark Huot, as I hide my embeds as a rule. I really hope this behavior can be fixed with an upgrade or sugar, as enabling hidden files mac-wide (if that will even fix the display issue) isn’t acceptable.

Loving the EE sugar - a nice additional would be the ability to quickly add an EE comment rather than the default HTML style comments.

The EE comments {!— comment —} don’t get rendered and I often use them through a sites template.

I seem to have strange issues with auto-complete…get lots of weird characters. Am I just crazy?

Espresso cheat sheet:
http://www.quicklycode.com/cheatsheets/espresso-shortcuts-cheat-sheet

Great Sugar. Where is Coda does not have a complete EE “Mode” this certainly increases the worth of Espresso for EE developers. Being new to EE, I am starting of with EE2, rather than learning EE1 only have to start learning 2. Does the sugar include all the syntax for EE2 as well? Since things are now called channels instead of weblogs, and such. Thanks in advance!

I have been using Espresso for the past year and have enjoyed it’s integration with YummyFTP.  Essentially, I can double click on a file in YummyFTP, and it opens in Espresso.  When I click “Save”, it updates on the server.  I know that this is pretty standard with a lot of FTP/Texteditor combos, but it just feels intuitive to me and the EE sugar makes it very convenient.  I was fortunate enough to get the program with the MacHeist bundle, so it was initially a matter of cost that drew me to it (it was at a time when I first switched to Mac and didn’t have a text editor yet).  I haven’t been disappointed.

Will you be updating this for EE2?  I love it for EE1.

QuietNight is a great theme and Espresso is awesome…thanks for the sneak peak.

I’m also an EE user and Espresso user. I was wondering how you utilize the sugar for EE.

I mean my process currently is to layout the design with placeholder content and then break down my templates into EE templates where I will then code through the system admin feature.

How do you do it?

Also is the EE sugar you developed for EE 1 or EE 2

Unfortunately, he abandoned this long ago. But for EE2 for Textmate of Coda go here: http://hellomountee.com/expressionengine-dev-toolkit/

I absolutely love your theme! Thank you so much :)