Thread

I’ve moved over to Eclipse since I am now using Linux for my main desktop, found a real nice tool to get just what I want for plug ins.

http://ondemand.yoxos.com/geteclipse/start

I just installed a demo of PHPdesigner (http://mpsoftware.dk/) and I must say it looks very good. Coincidentally they use CI as an example in their screencasts, so that’s a big plus! 😉

i like php designer as well. though the lack of code collapsing can be a huge pain sometimes.

I just installed a demo of PHPdesigner (http://mpsoftware.dk/) and I must say it looks very good. Coincidentally they use CI as an example in their screencasts, so that’s a big plus! 😉

i like php designer as well. though the lack of code collapsing can be a huge pain sometimes.

Do they? I see phpBB3 and Symphony in their screenshots. Link?

Komodo Edit | Dreamweaver 8 | Portable Notepad.

hehehe.. Komodo Edit Works just fine. it has intellisense and text highlighting. hehehehe

my 2 cents :

vim most of the time.
notepad++ on my work PC.
Textmate on my Mac at home.

I use PHP Designer 2008, I like the features like code hints, jump to function etc. (makes life a lot easier 😊 )
But not having things like cold folding is a bit annoying

I use notepad++ if I need to edit something quickly, or if I’m editing something on another computer

Seven great PHP IDEs compared:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-php-ide/index.html

PHP editors reviews:
http://www.php-editors.com/review/

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I would like to ask to everybody: which commercial IDE would you use, if you could pay for it?

Probably Zend studio.

i use Komodo Edit. just look at the colours!

I really don’t understand why Zend changed Zend Studio 5.5 (73MB) to a new version for Eclipse (265MB, $299). Despite the fact it has a few less features, the old version was much more intuitive and easy to use than this new bloated IDE. The old version was light and could be cheaper, but now you can only buy it embed into the new version.

Well, I sincerely don’t like Java-based programs. Mostly of them are huge, heavy and slower than their non-Java competitors. Aptana Studio (94MB, $99) and the new Zend Studio, for example, are based in Eclipse platform, so they are Java-based. The good thing is that they run in Windows, Linux or Mac.

For me, these Eclipse-based programs are less intuitive than their competitors. For example, I needed to ask a friend for help to just know that I must import files to start a new project using files from an existent web site. Why not just use the same folder where my web sites are, saving disk space, and where I can test with my own local web server? For me, start a new project importing files is something like to enter a car by its engine…

This new Zend Studio for Eclipse also only connects to a database via JDBC. I did try it, but it just can’t connect to my local MySQL, while the old version did it easily.

I don’t know if I am too used to Adobe Dreamweaver (300MB, $399), but I like very much its synchronize and upload features. It is easy to use and always at hand. I did test some IDEs, but they appear to me that they hide the upload function as much as they can. Mostly, they are very hard to just upload a single file to the server…

There is a debugger extension for Dreamweaver, but it just checks the page for errors. It helps, but is nothing compared to Zend debug/profiler/code completion. Despite this, the error checking of Zend sometimes find errors in where is no error at all. For example, if you write an HTML tag like <P style=“margin:0px”> some text </P>, it says that the ending tag doesn’t have an opening tag…

Many IDEs also use too much screen space for their windows and reserves only a small fraction for the coding editor, which should be the main area. In this aspect, Nusphere PHPEd (58MB, $299) is better because it does show and hide windows automatically. The old Zend 5.5 is nearly the same, but we need to open and close the windows manually. However, I liked more the Zend 5.5 interface. Also, PHPEd installs a lot of sub-applications in Windows (see Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel). Zend is more clean in this aspect.

Another IDE I did test was PHPDesigner (16MB, $59). It is very good, nice editor, have a better support for CSS and HTML than any other, but like PHPEd, it also needs XDebug and some other third party applications to work. It is commercial, and only offers a trial version.

The code completion, realtime error checking and debug tracking of Zend Studio, PHPDesigner and PHPed are really good. You can step in line by line in your code and watch the variables changing. I miss too much such features in Dreamweaver, because nothing can beat Dreamwever in design. With its CS3 version, draw XHTML pages with CSS is a breeze.

However, these debug tools have a flaw: they don’t take into account that the script where you are working rely on other scripts to run. So, they show errors because they don’t know that the execution should start elsewhere to load the needed libraries.

Another problem with the IDEs is that they have a window where they show the classes, methods and functions of your site, but they show these classes, methods and functions mixed with the framework classes. It is very hard to find what you want there. They should ask us what folders do not include in this list.

Aptana Studio is very slow to load (well, it is Java), and it doesn’t have a debugger for PHP, but have code completion. It is the best for Javascript and AJAX debug in either Firefox and Internet Explorer, also it has a JSON editor. It has a free version and a professional commercial version ($99).

The database features of Zend Studio, PHPEd and some others are almost useless. For example, you can’t even add fields or make changes in your tables. A good IDE should come with at least a good database/query builder, with embed logic to help us to create the best optimized tables and queries.

In this aspect they are very far away from the perfection. If you want to manage your database, try HeidiSQL (1.6MB, free), it is much better. HeidiSQL is a new open source version of the old MySQL-Front. It would be perfect if it have a query/table builder and optimizer, but it is much better than phpMyAdmin if you have direct access to your database.

Xdebug (160KB, free) can be installed in your local PHP, and it gives you better informative error messages.

If you need a good PHP/MySQL/Apache environment running in your machine, use AppServ (15MB, free). It installs the latest stable versions of the server software, making them ready to use.

Well, I still need to try Komodo (35MB, $295) and PHPEdit (38MB, $135). As I could see, Komodo have support for PHP and also Javascript/AJAX, but the best of it are the tools to build Regular Expressions. This is also a thing that all IDEs should have.

About the free IDEs, unfortunately there are not much options for us, and they don’t have the features of the commercial releases. If you can afford the price, a good commercial IDE may worth the investment.

I dont know what it is about dreamweaver - it just makes sense. Not that there are good free alternatives, but dreamweaver really swings it for me.

by far aptana is the editor for me not only is it open source and free they have aptana.tv to teach you how to use it something ellislabs does not seem to want to do

to teach you how to use it something ellislabs does not seem to want to do

I assume by “something” you mean “teach people how to use CodeIgniter”?  What evidence would lead you to think that this is something we don’t want to do?

by far aptana is the editor for me not only is it open source and free they have aptana.tv to teach you how to use it something ellislabs does not seem to want to do

Aptana.tv is all Javascript, Rails and Air (a bit like your comment) tutorial video, how does that help you to learn php or CodeIgniter?

A little more thought and a bit less random criticism would go a long way.