When it comes to Joomla! development these days, I prefer to use Panic’s Coda editor on the Mac. It’s what I ever wanted from an editor: clutter-free interface and powerful features!

One extra cool thing about Coda is that you can add custom references (or “books”) within the Coda workspace and furthermore it provides you with a search functionality on these books.

Thanks to Luca Scarpa I recently discovered these links at SitePoint and drastudio.com mentioning how to create your own custom books for various technologies. But there was one particular technology missing: Joomla!

So, without further adieu, I present you these simple settings and a handy book icon to add the official Joomla! Documentation website as a Coda book:

1. Click the “Books” button in the Coda toolbar (top) and then hit the + button at the bottom left to add a new book.

2. In the dialog window that appears, enter the following information:
Book Title: Joomla! Documentation
Book URL: http://docs.joomla.org/
Use For Mode: PHP-HTML
Search URL: http://docs.joomla.org/Special:Search?search=*&go=Go

3. Next, download this image and once it’s on your computer, drag the image inside the Cover Image area. This will create the book’s cover. So far your settings will look like this:

4. Click OK to add your book in Coda!

Now you can even use the search box in Coda to directly search the Joomla! documentation website.

Happy coding!