POLL: Which IDE do you use to develop PHP?

[Erwin Moller]

Hi group,

Just curious what IDEs are popular nowadays.

What do you expect from an IDE?
Debugging?
Do you use your IDE for debugging, or do you work like me? (Just use some
smart-placed var_dump() to dive into possible problems?)

Syntax highlightning?
Anything else?

I use Eclipse 2.1 with PHP-plugin.
Reason: It is for free and works fine.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

[Henk Verhoeven]

Edit with UltraEdit or Eclipse, save locally or through Samba, run on
Apache with php4 (Linux) or 5 (windows), test UI through IE6 and
FireFox, search with phpPeanuts hypercode browsers. Als use pnt/unit,
debug info and skin generation from phpPeanuts framework.

Greetings,

Henk Verhoeven,
www.phpPeanuts.org, www.metaclass.nl.

Erwin Moller wrote:

Hi group,

Just curious what IDEs are popular nowadays.

What do you expect from an IDE?
Debugging?
Do you use your IDE for debugging, or do you work like me? (Just use some
smart-placed var_dump() to dive into possible problems?)

Syntax highlightning?
Anything else?

I use Eclipse 2.1 with PHP-plugin.
Reason: It is for free and works fine.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

[Bent Stigsen]

Erwin Moller wrote:

Hi group,
(chorus:) Hi Erwin
I mostly use SciTE (Scintilla), but also got Crimson and HTML-kit which
I use occasionaly.

I favour SciTE because it is very lightweight, but at the same time
extreemely versatile. (http://www.scintilla.org/)

What do you expect from an IDE?
fast, good(*) text editing, syntax highlighting, project management.

(*): "good", beyond just copy/paste/search/replace features (e.g.
macrolanguage, wordcompletion, codetemplates, ...). Whatever makes life
easier.
Debugging?
(personal rant) Analyse complex segments beforehand, and do your
errorhandling and a debugger is rarely (if ever) needed.

Admittedly there have been occasions, where I wished I had one.
Do you use your IDE for debugging, or do you work like me? (Just use some
smart-placed var_dump() to dive into possible problems?)

I do the same. But if I had an IDE with debugging capabilities I would
probably use and appreciate it.
/Bent

[Roy W. Andersen]

Erwin Moller wrote:

Hi group,

Hi. Thanks for this thread :)

I always love threads like this, because it gives me a lot of
alternatives for my never-ending search for a new editor. I've been
using Homesite for ages, which is the only one I've felt comfortable
with, mostly due to it's vastly underrated highlighting for PHP. But
it's getting outdated, and newer functions and reserved words aren't
highlighted. And on top of that, it's a Windows only program, and since
I spend as much time in Linux as I do in Windows, I'd like to have a
crossplatform editor (or at the very least an editor with versions for
both platforms).

So - I'm using Homesite, which is more a HTML editor than a PHP editor,
but it has very nice highlighting which is all I require. Debugging is
achieved through my superefficient ultra-advanced debugging-functions:

function print_a($x) {
echo "<pre>";
print_r($x);
echo "</pre>";
}
function print_x($x) {
print_a($x);
exit();
}

:D

I have a server on my LAN, so I have all my projects on that server and
connect through SMB or FTP/SFTP, so I have no need for any debugging
within the editor itself.

But yea, great thread, and lots of great tips. I've started to get a bit
comfortable with jEdit after seeing it mentioned in this thread - only
thing I don't like about it is the toolbar icons ;)

I also downloaded and tried PHPEdit, and one great thing about that is
the possibility to define a separate colour for variables within
strings, which can be very handy at times. But the lack of a
Linux-version means I won't be using that, but still a very nice editor
for Windows, and free for non-commercial use isn't half bad, though I do
prefer opensource. Being unemployed means I can't afford to buy any
editor, but there are so many free ones out there it really isn't a
problem. Once I can get someone to start paying me to develop I'll
probably get my hands on Zend Studio, but for now I'll be moving to jEdit :)

Roy W. Andersen
--
ra at broadpark dot no / http://roy.netgoth.org/

"Hey! What kind of party is this? There's no booze
and only one hooker!" - Bender, Futurama

[Richards Noah \(IFR LIT MET\)]

"Erwin Moller"
<si************ *************** *************** @spamyourself.c om> wrote in
message news:41******** **************@ news.xs4all.nl. ..

Hi group,

Just curious what IDEs are popular nowadays.

What do you expect from an IDE?
Debugging?
Do you use your IDE for debugging, or do you work like me? (Just use some
smart-placed var_dump() to dive into possible problems?)

Syntax highlightning?
Anything else?

I use Eclipse 2.1 with PHP-plugin.
Reason: It is for free and works fine.

Regards,
Erwin Moller

Textpad in Windows, emacs in Linux/Unix.

[Mxsmanic]

Visual InterDev 1.0 (just the text editor), Notepad, or--most
recently--UltraEdit.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

[Brandon Blackmoor]

Erwin Moller wrote:

Just curious what IDEs are popular nowadays.

I use TextPad. IDEs just get in the way.

bblackmoor
2005-01-12

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Erwin Moller wrote:

Hi group,

Just curious what IDEs are popular nowadays.
I use PHPEdit <http://www.waterproof. fr/products/PHPEdit/>.
Previously used DreamWeaver about 1% time. Now, having setup own form
generation tools and migrated to CSS container based designs, no need
to go for DW.
What do you expect from an IDE?
Mostly auto completion of PHP's functions and user functions. Also,
parameter hinting. Since I use lots of classes--mostly by include(), I
would expect auto completion of object names, methods, properties and
their parameters.

I would also expect smart quoting like "" for " and smart quoting
inside another quotes like "\"" for "". Paranthesis completion, etc.
All these features are available with PHPEdit.

One colorful feature I expect is OptiPerl's Box coding
<http://www.xarka.com/optiperl/features.html>--which none of the PHP
editors provide now.
Debugging?
Not much. There are less chances that I will make mistakes with
these features.
Do you use your IDE for debugging, or do you work like me? (Just use some smart-placed var_dump() to dive into possible problems?)

I save it and then run it in browser. Most of the time it will work.
But, in rare cases my custom error handler will spits out the error in
the browser with some valid information like type of error, error
context, line of error by highlighting and backtrace, etc.

So, my developing environment is
XP/TortoiseSVN/XAMPP/PHPEdit/Notepad(for Unicode)/Firefox/Immediate
Window (a PHP script which eval's submitted script)

--
<?php echo 'Just another PHP saint'; ?>
Email: rrjanbiah-at-Y!com Blog: http://rajeshanbiah.blogspot.com/

[Mxsmanic]

Sean writes:

I use Adobe GoLive. Albeit, all I use it for is so that I have a
syntax highlighting text editor that knows most web languages.

The same reason I've used Visual InterDev. But I discovered a few days
ago that highlighting text editors do exist, and I picked UltraEdit,
which seems to work very well (and also has a simple FTP capability that
is very handy).

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

[Mxsmanic]

It's interesting that almost everyone responding to this poll is using
nothing more than a text editor (or a fancy text editor at most).
Someone must be buying all those bloated IDEs out there; if it's not
hardcore Web developers, who is it?

I've always preferred to keep things simple, and it reassures me that
I'm not alone in this. HTML and its breathren were designed to be easy
to write and maintain with simple tools, so I've never understood why
anyone would drop hundreds of dollars on bloated front ends that hide
the real code (and may even make it inaccessible), complicate both
development and maintenance, and bloat the final Web pages so that they
execute a hundred times more slowly than if they were written in
Notepad.

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

[lunatech]

he********@500m ghosting.com wrote:

Yes. For documentation, I've put a direct shortcut to the php.net
search engine, so I get all in need in one line.

If you are using a Linux for your dev work, you can mirror the PHP
manual on your PC itself. Create a virtual host and you have the
manual at your tips. Have a look at http://www.php.net/mirroring.php

--

Raj Shekhar
System Administrator, programmer and slacker
home : http://rajshekhar.net
blog : http://rajshekhar.net/blog/
work : http://netphotograph.com