Thread

Has anyone tried the new Aptana IDE 1.0 with the PHP plugin?  I’ve been experimenting with it for a week or so and it’s pretty nice.  In comparison to the Eclipse PDT, Aptana offers much nicer HTML, CSS and Javascript features.  However, PDT is still a more capable PHP editor. 

If you have been using a plain text editor up until now, it may be worth taking a look since it’s free and runs on all platforms.  The developers are also very responsive to user requests in the forums and enhanced PHP features are in the works.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found an editor that enables true code introspection and hinting for CI, since the “$this->....->....” is usually too abstract.

I’m downloading Aptana now.  Anybody have any opinion on how it compares to Zend Studio?  That’s what I’ve been using for the past 4 years or so.

I haven’t used Zend Studio, but from previous research, you will definitely lose a lot of the advanced PHP functionality—especially since the Aptana PHP plugin is very new.  However, I find when coding in CI, most IDE’s don’t really add much value.  For PHP, Aptana does syntax checking, code highlighting, very basic code hinting, and class outlining.  However, it offers advanced HTML, CSS and Javascript features.  I find Eclipse PDT to be somewhere in the middle—with better PHP handling, but weaker HTML/CSS/Javascript.  The new Zend Studio is actually built on top of the Eclipse PDT open source version.  I was able to get Zend Debugger working in Eclipse PDT, but didn’t find much value over the CI Profiler with an enhancement to add Session info.

Next Zend Studio release (Zend Studio Neon) is going to be based on Eclipse+PDT. Actually, PDT development is leaded by people working at Zend.
In order to have better *ml/js/css support in Eclipse+PDT, you can install spket plugin (http://www.spket.com/) or even aptana’s plugin (without their php plugin). On the other hand, WTP 3.4 releases (Eclipse web tools project - included by default in PDT all-in-one downloads) already contains better JS editor, but unfortunately there is no PDT for Eclipse 3.4 yet.

Since I just got a new computer, I can use Aptana without having to worry about it freezing or slowing down randomly.

I’m also using Aptana Studio 1.0 and it works great.

Zend Studio is an excellent IDE as well, but I don’t think it’s for me.

I find Aptana dog-slow and very cumbersome to work with.

Speaking of Java editors.  There is also Netbeans 6 which now appears to have a PHP plugin.  This IDE also appears to have a lot of other cool stuff now too.  I downloaded it originally to play with Glassfish and Jruby.

Lately I have been using Eclipse but I might have to try out Netbeans for a while.  I switch around too much.  However, I can’t really say there are any editors that are nice enough to really keep me in one spot either.

Edit: I just installed the PHP plugin for Netbeans and it is not too bad.  I like the feel of Netbeans a little more than Eclipse.  I think I am going to try it out for a while.

John: That’s the first time I’ve heard Netbeans mentioned in a while.  I have to take a look at it again. 

Craig: I haven’t noticed any performance issues using Aptana or Eclipse PDT.  I’m running on Windows with 2GB RAM.

Last time I played with Aptana (couple of months ago) it felt really heavy and slow.  Not for me.

i had been using aptana and sometimes it also freezing and it needs me to restart again the IDE at really slows down my production ..

I liked Aptana at first, but then it started acting up a lot.  When I have it connected to my ftp, and try to create a new file from within Aptana, on the ftp, it crashes.  And it is rather slow….

I personally like phpDesigner.  Offers the real-time syntax checker and such like Aptana, code completions, syntax highliting, etc.