Since I’ve tried what seemed like an odd choice for sharing my portfolio on Medium, I then thought, why not also give Coda.io a try? So i did it.
First Impression
Even though I’ve known Coda for quite some time, but it’s more from the product research’s perspective. I was curious and excited to use it with a solid use case.
Coda positions itself as a tool for makers — you don’t need to know how to code to create a tool. Hence, the“/” shortcut pulls out a huge list of elements that users can use, compared to Medium’s simple 5 items when clicking the (+) icon.
As I mentioned in Trying Medium for My Portfolio , it does feel a little limited for using Medium for portfolios. What Coda excels here is that they have the ability for using the “image table” for creating simple media lightbox, and there’s also native integration with Figma, which is quite essential for digital designers. I find it quite interesting that I can create and style a “button” quite easily.
Coda also supports page hierarchy — users can create subpages or organize pages by folders. This makes it “feel” more like a regular website. Their page settings are quite robust. Users can configure what to display and customize the typography (standard/ serif + standard/large). I also like that I can toggle on/off for displaying outline. However, I still prefer the typeface of Medium. It’s much easier to read and better looking in my opinion :)
There are more than one way to create a card gallery to present a design portfolio in Coda. The way I do it is to create all the individual work as a subpage, and have the main landing page displaying the subpages so that it’s dynamic. They turn into cards by default.
Conclusion
Medium still rules the writing experience, no doubt. There’s nothing distracting authors to write. This however, also brings the limitation if you’re looking to organize the articles/pages. The “publication” feature provides users some freedom to customize the landing page or homepage. Although it may not be enough for more advanced customization, it should be sufficient the majority of the use cases.
Coda on the other hand, allows users to create a “doc” more freely with lots of free add-ons. Users can create a working doc together for brainstorming, team meetings, documentations, and they can publish the docs as articles or web pages. Although their writing experience is not as amazing as Medium, it’s still better than Microsoft Word 365. Okay, maybe this is just my disfavor for Microsoft Word 365. Back to Coda, I really think it’s quite fun & easy to use. Highly recommended for anyone curious to give it a try!
