There is a lots of PHP editors today, free, commercials, open source and everything you want, or almost. But what there is not, the “ideal” editor where you love to code, fast and neat.
Yesterday when a friend asked me to recommend him an editor I discovered that none of the PHP editors fit with my needs. There is two big categories, the boosted in features PHP IDE where you can find everything you want or don’t want. This is the category of slow IDE! The second is the very light with just syntax highlighting, few features here and there, and pretty fast but without completition, making you lose type to fix a stupid typo in your code. Between the two categories, I couldn’t find anything.
Today I’m using Scite, very small and fast, finally I do prefer speed over features. Even completition is a good feature that I’m missing, after years of development PHP functions become known by heart, for the uncommon a manual check have to be done anyway.
I don’t know if this is possible or no, to have something fast, light, with just three or four necessary features, or should I keep using Scite? After all best feature isn’t coding, but it’s the editor I use for everything, my writing (including this one), open huge log files (from 10Mo to 100Mo and more), change files encoding from 8bit, UTF8, and UCS-2…. etc.
I use SciTE a fair bit when writing short bits of PHP and Python code, but if you just need a super-lightweight editor with just the bare necessities for log files and such, MetaPad is even quicker and serves as a perfect Notepad replacement.
I use SciTE a fair bit when writing short bits of PHP and Python code, but if you just need a super-lightweight editor with just the bare necessities for log files and such, MetaPad is even quicker and serves as a perfect Notepad replacement.
I use Eclipse PDT, very good editor with all features that someone can need – but there are still bugs. I am waiting for next release that should by in March. As a very light editor I have Notepad++ – this is the best light and fast editor with lots of plugins.
I use Eclipse PDT, very good editor with all features that someone can need – but there are still bugs. I am waiting for next release that should by in March. As a very light editor I have Notepad++ – this is the best light and fast editor with lots of plugins.
I use the “Zend Development Environment” from Zend. There are a couple versions. I use version 5.5 Enterprise Edition. It’s java-based and installs with it’s own JRE, thus making it a little bloated in install size, but it doesn’t have a large memory footprint on my machine. I use both the Linux and Windows Versions at home and work and have found them to work identically. If anything, the Linux release works a little better. The windows version can eat up memory if you leave it open for days on end. It has code-completion and handy tool-tips on PHP functions so you know what input it’s expecting and any optional parameters.
It also features syntax highlighting, local and remote debugging, cold folding, SQL server (everything from MySQL to MS SQL support) browsing, FTP/SFTP connections, etc…
It’s a great tool and I really enjoy it. My only gripe is it’s cost. It’s not cheap. The Enterprise edition is ~$200.00. I find it to be completely worth the expense but just hate paying for stuff (I’m cheap…). There is a “Professional” version that’s ~$99 but it lacks support for remote-server debugging, which can present an issue if you’re running windows and don’t have a local web server to test and debug with.
I use the “Zend Development Environment” from Zend. There are a couple versions. I use version 5.5 Enterprise Edition. It’s java-based and installs with it’s own JRE, thus making it a little bloated in install size, but it doesn’t have a large memory footprint on my machine. I use both the Linux and Windows Versions at home and work and have found them to work identically. If anything, the Linux release works a little better. The windows version can eat up memory if you leave it open for days on end. It has code-completion and handy tool-tips on PHP functions so you know what input it’s expecting and any optional parameters.
It also features syntax highlighting, local and remote debugging, cold folding, SQL server (everything from MySQL to MS SQL support) browsing, FTP/SFTP connections, etc…
It’s a great tool and I really enjoy it. My only gripe is it’s cost. It’s not cheap. The Enterprise edition is ~$200.00. I find it to be completely worth the expense but just hate paying for stuff (I’m cheap…). There is a “Professional” version that’s ~$99 but it lacks support for remote-server debugging, which can present an issue if you’re running windows and don’t have a local web server to test and debug with.