MacRabbit has introduced Espresso, a new Web development tool for Mac OS X. It’s being released now as a preview version; the developer expects to ship Espresso in November.
While CSSEdit focuses specifically on the creation and editing of Cascading Style Sheets, Espresso is a general Web development workflow tool. It sports editing capabilities, organizational tools, a preview engine, search and replace tools, publishing abilities and a plug-in engine.
A rule-based syntax engine recognizes code and offers context-sensitive assistance to complete your work. The software will ship with HTML, XML, CSS and JavaScript support, and Sugars — what MacRabbit calls the plug-ins — will extend it further. Source lists let you manage projects, and the Workspace combines the concepts of tabs and sidebars. A Live Preview engine lets you see what your page is going to look like as you’re making it. Espresso will also ship with support for FTP, SFTP and Amazon S3; you can upload projects using dynamic parallel connections.
MacRabbit is accepting applications for users who want to test Espresso — visit the Web site for details.