JOEYA  I've been watching Pixelmator for a while and it's really starting to mature into a useful product. That said, if this app aims to appeal to web designers it's in desperate need of layer groups, layer effects and vector shapes (perhaps even a pen tool). It also sorely needs some sort of sane palette management. Although it's a good looking app, it seriously has one of the most cluttered interfaces I've ever seen.  
(Version 1.5)

JOEYA  According to a new blog post on their site MacRabbit's two developers have been very busy with school and simply didn't have time to update the software, respond to feedback or provide support. So it would seem they essentially abandoned the project for several months while school got the best of them.

The good news is that they're just about finished with school now so they expect to work full time on updating the software. I suppose it would have been nice to hear this several months ago but considering that most of us complaining here actually purchased Espresso, I guess it's better late than never.  
(Version 1.0.5)

JOEYA  Having been part of the beta program since the beginning I can tell you that it was very unclear how many people in the beta actually used CSSEdit. I use it daily and love it, it's what got me interested in Espresso, but during the beta I was clearly in the minority when it came to requests for the integration of the two programs. Most people I spoke to had never even used CSSEdit.

So I just think Espresso is aimed at a different audience. With the integration of CSSEdit and a proper working live preview it would be the best program on the market for front end developers like myself. However I truly don't believe that's the direction this application is going. Espresso seems to be aimed squarely at developers doing web based scripting more so than front end designers building with HTML and CSS.  
(Version 1.0.5)

JOEYA  Easily the best CSS editor on the market. CSSEdit integrates very well with multiple styles of workflow all in one streamlined UI. Hand coders, visual editors and those toggling between both will have an easy time styling sites with real time previews. Simply brilliant software.

The only reason I didn't give this app 5 stars is because support is non existent and the app rarely receives updates. Moreover since MacRabbit is now focused on Espresso, I think CSSEdit is poised to become the ugly stepchild of the MacRabbit family.  
(Version 2.6)

JOEYA  Espresso has a ton of potential but it's not there just yet. Sure it's fast, lightweight and extensible but it's also unfinished. Marquee features such as Live Preview simply don't work as advertised. The MacRabbit website claims, "Espresso offers real-time styling of absolutely any web page. Even when your site or application is powered by a complex database..." However in practice Live Preview only works on static HMTL and Espresso doesn't support local servers at all.

Add in things like the lack of visual CSS editing, the missing X-Ray functionality and little things like code snippets not wrapping around selections, the unusual tab workflow and windows not remembering their settings and the entire experience feels rough around the edges. Clearly 1.0 was rushed to market.

The good news is virtually all of these issues can easily be resolved in time and for the most part you can work around them until a fix comes along. The bad news is no one knows when the fixes will come. Virtually all of these same exact problems existed during the betas and in many cases MacRabbit did nothing about it. In most cases they didn't even respond to feedback.

Nevertheless, I'm hopeful. CSSEdit is fantastic so I'm confident these guys can put together a killer app. I just think they need a lot more time to do it.  
(Version 1.0.1)

JOEYA  I agree, it's far too early to review Espresso. Although a proper beta was supposed to be released in November of last year, development has been delayed repeatedly and the current beta probably isn't a good reflection of the final feature set.

That said from what I have seen so far, Espresso seems to target the developer crowd more so than the designer crowd. Through the implementation of sugars, there's a broad upcoming support of languages while design-oriented features such as visual CSS editing (arguably what MacRabbit, the makers of CSSEdit, are best known for) is suspiciously absent.

To be clear, Espresso seems to compliment CSSEdit instead of replacing it. Therefore, in my opinion it's more of a TextMate competitor than a Coda one -despite what MacRabbit's marketing indicates. As such, for those of us currently using (insert your editor here) plus CSSEdit, Espresso doesn't doesn't really offer any advantages - not just yet anyway.  
(Version 1.0b3)

JOEYA  Coda is easily the best web IDE on the market for front end designers like myself. TextMate and BBEdit seem to have better support for web based scripting languages while Coda appears to be aimed more at the X/HTML CSS crowd. As I typically build web-based templates or static websites, the default toolset in Coda suits me nicely.

That said, the CSS editor (as of 1.6.2) is pretty much useless. Without a dedicated live preview window, editing CSS via the provided visual tools requires multiple screen splits. You need one split for the page and one for the CSS editor. Even worse you need to toggle both splits to edit mode to have access to markup. It's about the most clumsy implementation of a CSS editor I've ever seen. Considering I'm using 4 monitors, it's a bit absurd to have all of my stuff crammed into just one screen however that's the only option as Coda makes no use of a multiple monitor workflow.

Coda's text editor is better, though it doesn't necessarily compare to TextMate or BBEdit in terms of robustness. Here again Coda offers no dedicated preview window so you end up playing the toggle back and forth game as you develop. Even still, the ability to set a local preview URL allows you to preview dynamic content via a local server so I've generally been pleased with the feature set here.

FTP, SVN, Terminal and books are icing on the cake. I'd suggest that the FTP could be more full featured (especially since these guys make Transmit) but it's functional. And in many ways that seems to be the running theme with Coda. It's a jack of all trades, master of none. But Panic is a good company that listens to their customers so I expect big things from 2.0.  
(Version 1.6.2)

JOEYA  Excellent features but expensive. The $87 "Pro" version doesn't even let you save or print your reports. You'll need the $267 "Enterprise" version for that.  
(Version 1.3.3)