Panic Nova
Quick review of Panic Nova
Last month, I thought I would experiment with Panic's Nova application.
Nova is a modern text editor that focuses on being the best Macintosh text editor. It's built for developers and design for the Macintosh.
Five Things I Liked
- Minimap - Great way to get a high level visual of a code.
- Split screen - Ability to see different files anyway that works best for you.
- In Product Preview - You can add preview to the split screen. When you save a file the preview window refreshes and you see your change instantly.
- Remote Access - You can easily load up connected remote files. This made it easy to open up multiple files and make changes. You can break down destinations to different directories. In my case, I was able to separate public_html and secure_html - making it easy to see what's in what section.
- Extensions - There are a lot of extensions written by loyal Nova users. If you don't see what your looking for, you can always create your own.
Four Things I Didn't Like
- No Shortcut Commands - I didn't find a way to apply HTML Anchor to the selected text. The closest functionality would be the "Wrap Selection in Tag"
- Saved Search Queries - There wasn't a way to save common search/replace queries.
- Wrap Selection in Tag - In my test I found it difficult to apply a style sheet to an object while using the "Wrap Selection in Tag." I would see my classname being entered in the closing part of the tag.
- Expensive - Hard to justify spending $100 for another text editor. I already purchased BBEdit and use it as my default text editor.
In Summary
For now, I am not going to purchase Nova. It's a pretty cool application, but I think the tools in BBEdit are good for me.
I'll keep an eye on updates, especially since September 23 is the one-year anniversary of the launch.