PHP Editor

Most of the time I just use notepad. I prefer to do my own indents as some of the editors make the indents too big. When you're coding 10,000 lines at a time the last thing you want is code 5 miles that way ----------------->

I occasionally use Dreamweaver MX which is quite nice when I'm working on layout etc.

 

Any good editor allows you to set the tab width.

I've tried about 8 php IDE's. I go back to UltraEdit and do it myself everytime. The bloat is amazing in most IDEs.

A text editor and php.net. That's the way to do it.

 

I use Scite. It uses a lexer to higlight the code, it is quite amazing how it can highlight javascript inside php inside html etc.
Its also blazingly fast

 

i use dreamweaver and php designer 2005.

the later is cool. and its absolutely free too.

 

I use UltraEdit. It's not free. About €35.
I strongly suggest NOT using Dreamweaver.

 

I would recommend PHP Designer 2005. I think it's my best freeware I've used. Zend Studio is cool but I guess it's too much for a starter. So I suggest you go for PHP Designer 2005.

1. It supports PHP, XML, HTML, js, VB, SQL, CSS, PERL, etc

 

I use Zend Studio at Work and Ultraedit at home, I have to agree with noppid, it's just easiest to do it yourself.

 

PhP designer is free and a well featured editor but if you're just starting out using dreamweaver mx is good to get the ball rolling.

Here's a shot of PHP designer:



You need to set up a testing sever on your machine if you want to preview locally.

 

Has anybody used: hapedit.free.fr, I find it cool and easy!

 

I would say this really comes down to how you will be using php. You mention that you already use Dreamweaver. Will you be continuing to use Dreamweaver for your projects and enhancing them via some php? If that is the case, then Dreamweavers color syntaxing of php is probably more than enough for you. It recognizes variables and function names, and has limited previewing capabilities with php.

Or are you going to expand and create entire applications with PHP? If that is the case then an IDE like Zend or Eclipse with the php plug-in would be more adequate. But if you are going to do what I described above, then they will simply be overkill. Both because they offer much more functionality than you need (versioning, project file management, etc) and because why open another program to edit a small portion of the files you are dealing with.

My main work machine at my office is a Powermac with Dreamweaver MX 2004, so that is what I use most of the time to manage my sites and scripts. At home on my windows laptop, I usually either SSH into the server and edit the files with the vi editor, but recently downloaded php designer 2005. It's ok, but usually overkill for the small changes I make from home.

UltraEdit and Textpad are both very good recommendations if you didn't already use Dreamweaver for PHP support, or if you have another computer that doesn't have Dreamweaver installed on it.

 

I use a combo of ultraedit and dreamweaver. Simple things really work nicely in dreamweaver, but it's not all the way there. On occasion, I'll take the html output of a php function inside the dreamweaver code so I can play with the design a bit.

I've tried the zend ide, but it seemed a little clunky compared to what I'm used to as a c programmer. The snippets were good. I also didn't install the zend debugger thing on my server and I think that would have made it a LOT more useful. I'll probably give it a try again in a few months.

 

I use Ultraedit and Dreamweaver. Ultraedit is good not only for php, but also for asp, html and general editing. I only use Dreamweaver when I need to do some complex layout in html, especially a long complicated table layout.