RandomNoise Coda

Author: RandomNoise
Publisher: RandomNoise
Shared by: MR
On: 2015-04-05 03:32:02
Updated by: InkBlot
On: 2023-04-21 20:09:24
Rating: 0.00 Clarus out of 10 (0 vote)
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What is RandomNoise Coda?

The word ballyhooed doesn’t even begin to cover the PR buzz around the Java programming languae. Platform independent. Portable. So, cries the real-world user, what do I get out of it? Just some little Web page animations?

RandomNoise made a leap of faith when it created Coda, the first general-use application written entirely in Java. You can run Coda if you have a Java Virtual Machine installed on your Mac (we ran Coda with no problems under Macintosh Runtime for Java (MRJ) version 1.0.2 and with speedier but less solid performance under MRJ 1.5b1). Coda does its best to masquerade as a normal apphcation, all the way to giving you a splash screen upon launch. Once up and running (and in about the time it takes to launch Microsoft Word 6), Coda presents a face that will warm the hearts of page layout pros. There’s a page (with a user-definable default height and width in pixels), floating palettes, and a floating toolbar. It even can show rulers and snap-to (or not) grids and guides.

Making a page is fairly easy. RandomNoise did an excellent job in creating a user interface that will be familiar to most graphics application users, and the overall learning curve is gentle. Click a tool in the toolbar-like Controls Panel (so-called because, in technical terms, every element on a page, whether an image or scrolling text, is a Java control or object ), then click and drag on the page to make a bounding box for this object. In a nice interface touch, holding down Shift while dragging constrains the box to a square. You can move, resize, align, even layer objects exactly as you would graphics in a page layout program. There’s a healthy variety of tools, but if you find you miss, say, an arrow tool, no problem. Because Coda is written in Java, the application is modular by nature. That means anyone with a basic (well, maybe more than basic) grasp of Java can create a tool, and integrating it into Coda is as easy as installing a plug-in.

The other advantage of Coda’s Java nature (aside from the wealth of caffeine-related puns available) is that anything you build can be dynamic. In other words, nothing has to just sit there. A button can move, change appearance when the mouse rolls over or clicks it, and even send messages to any other element. The last is the most powerful benefit of creating a Web page in Java: Pages not only can be flashy but also can have added functionality. For instance, you can place a small “window” icon on your Web page that will pop up into a full window (into which you can enter text) upon either Mouse Enter or Mouse Down. A user could type in comments, which could be sent via a simple HTML Post command. This feature saves space and load times, and it’s pretty cool, to boot.

Still, all is not sweetness and fight in Codaland. Although its Java nature endows Coda with all these capabilities (Don’t like Coda’s Windows-like appearance? Replace all the appropriate Java class files and graphics, and it’s got a new look!), that same nature makes regular and thorough use of Coda problematic. First, Java is far from a mature technology — not only is it shaky in heavy-use conditions (making it unsuitable for use in nuclear power plants, for example), but widespread acceptance is far on the horizon. RandomNoise implicitly acknowledged that limitation, positioning Coda as a Web page builder when it conceivably could work as almost any type of application, such as a replacement for Microsoft PowerPoint, on a Java-sawy system.

Second, even for Web use, Java is not a stand-alone solution. Although Coda can send its runtime files (the Java files needed to run the applets that comprise a page) to the user’s browser in compressed, uncompressed, or CAB (for Microsoft Internet Explorer only) format, Web pages created by Coda are quite large — easily hundreds of kilobytes for a snazzy page. You can create small Java applets within Coda for inclusion within a plain HTML page — just build a “page” of small dimensions, and cut and paste the HTML tags Coda generates — but other, cheaper applications do a decent job of this, albeit lacking Coda’s power. Also, many people browse the Web with Java turned off. Even though it’s a simple matter for an astute Webmaster to write a Javascript that redirects such users to a non-Java page (and RandomNoise makes such a script available), this still means Webmasters must make multiple versions of a site.

Finally, there’s Java’s just plain weirdness — on rare occasions parts of applets won’t work, or Coda itself will redraw a screen in a strange way. Being on the bleeding edge means sometimes you get a bit bloody.

Despite the its shortcomings, working with Coda is a joy, when not wrangfing with Java issues. It’s a good example of good design and offers a lot in an easy-to-use package. If this is the future, we could do a lot worse.

Turner, D. D. (October 1997). Coda. MacAddict. (pg. 64).


Download RandomNoise Coda for Mac

(unknown size)
7 / 2015-11-14 / (Unavailable for external downloads) / /
(5.19 MiB / 5.45 MB)
/ compressed w/ Stuffit
6 / 2015-04-05 / 4878bddcb554652a4b875dfb43ea0d3f097b8d87 / /


Architecture


IBM PowerPC



System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.5





Compatibility notes

Minimum Requirements

  • PowerPC processor
  • 32 MB RAM
  • System 7.5
  • Mac OS Runtime for Java


Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver





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