Espresso is Vaporware No More

After a long, long wait we’re incredibly happy to tell you that the first public release of Espresso is available! You can get it now at the Espresso website. This release is a Public Beta, so it is not yet finished.

Espresso PB1 comes with a powerful text core, and contains default support for HTML, XML, CSS and JavaScript (more Sugars are already available, but we decided not to include them yet). Previewing has Overrides just like CSSEdit, so updates are smooth and easy. Publishing offers you fool-proof synchronization, and a complete Browse mode for FTP, SFTP and S3. To get a first feel of Espresso, go try it out!

A Public Beta is not the 1.0 we expected when we announced it. We would like to explain why we dropped this ball, for those who have been anxiously awaiting a release. MacRabbit is currently two guys, and we are both still studying. Our academic workload this year was a lot heavier than we anticipated, and progress suffered as a result. Espresso is an ambitious project, so its complexity might have caused a delay in any case. Our biggest mistake was announcing too early.

With all this in mind, we’re now going into When It’s Ready mode. There’s still a lot of work to be done! New Public Betas will appear as we’re moving towards 1.0. A very happy 2009 to everyone!

Of Coffee and Eddys

As many of you have noticed, November has come and gone without seeing an Espresso release. The main reason Espresso is still vaporware for you (unless you are a tester) is that we underestimated the amount of work that goes into documenting and polishing the inner workings of an extensible engine. CSSEdit was very much closed off like any traditional app, so exposing Espresso’s guts to the cruel outside world was uncharted territory for us. As a result, we’re only now approaching the point where we feel comfortable giving it to the general public. Stay tuned for more.

In CSSEdit related news, the “CSS editor that could” was honored with a Macworld Eddy. Many thanks to Macworld for an awesome end of 2008!