A mature app that I would like to see improved. – Code Editor by Panic Review

I don’t think Coda quite keeps up with the level of productivity I expect on a modern iPad, and it’s not clear the developer intends it to. My impression is that this app is treated as a late-mature product, with ongoing maintenance but little ongoing investment. That said, I haven’t found anything better yet. I use the SSH terminal and code editor on a daily basis. These both work well enough to get by, but I also feel frustrated by them on a daily basis. Things I really like: - Edit files as if editing “directly on the remote”. You don’t need to manually download files locally before editing or manually upload them when finished, circa 15 years ago (and some competitor apps require this!!!). Just “open”, edit, “save”. - SSH tabs grouped with file tabs, and as many as you want. - Improvements on standard iPad cursor/selection, including two-finger pinch to select a block of text. - Pretty good syntax highlighting and completion. These are the areas I would like to see invested in: - Returning to an SSH terminal often gets the screen size wrong so I can’t see the left ~100px or bottom ~100px — and therefore can’t see what I’m typing. Workaround: Hit the “lock” button to turn off your screen, then unlock your screen and press “Connect”. This time it gets the size right. Happens many times throughout the day. - Move the “find” panel to the bottom of the screen so it’s easier to close it and doesn’t cover the file tabs. - Auto-select the text in the “find” panel when I press `cmd-f`. This way I can press `cmd-f` and immediately start typing my next search. Currently I need to manually clear the previous query before I can start a new one, so it ends up looking more like `cmd-f <type type type> <realize it’s appending to my previous query> cmd-a delete <re-type type type>`. - Update the file navigation to be more iOS-like with breadcrumbs at the top to browse up a directory — I eventually figured out that it works best if you go full-screen on the “remote” files list so that you can swipe “back” from the left edge of the screen to go “up” a level in the hierarchy. - Opening a file for editing is too clunky. I want this to be the default option — when I tap a file, open it so I can edit it. Give me a (...) menu if you want to allow other actions without opening it. I rarely do anything other than open it for editing, so it’s an extra step that I go through hundreds of times per day. - Keyboard selection is weak. This might be more the fault of default iOS behavior, but here’s something I do quite often: Start with my cursor in the middle of a line. `cmd-shift-right` to select the rest of the line. Then `shift-left` a few times to unselect the right-most characters on the line. Doesn’t work: instead it moves the left side of the selection further left, which I don’t want. Workaround: Remember those right-most chars you wanted to keep, delete the rest of the line, and re-type them. - Keyboard nav bug: Select an entire line with `cmd-L`. Press the right arrow. It should take you to the beginning of the next line. Instead it jumps down an extra line. - Terminal scrolling: Termius has this awesome feature where they KEEP YOUR TERMINAL OUTPUT HISTORY instead of deleting it when it scrolls off-screen, so you can scroll back and read long outputs/logs. This is amazing, and uses your iPad to approve upon the standard SSH experience. Please implement this. - There’s probably more... but this is just what’s at the top of my mind.
Review by coll.n on Code Editor by Panic.