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Posted by Mike P2 on 04/26/07 22:36
Zend Studio is very nice for just PHP, as well as for editing any
other little file (CSS, .htacces, etc) you might deal with that's not
heavy. The next best thing I've tried is Dreamweaver's code view,
which has code coloring and some basic function help, and it does a
nice job with common sense things like indentation and stuff. I've
tried at least 5 editors before sticking with Zend.
ZS has a built in PHP debugger (it will run your PHP scripts right
there in the IDE like Komodo, and show the output in either text or
html-rendering mode (uses .net IE I think)), a nice code analyzer that
checks for common mistakes and possible problem areas, syntax
highlighting (of coarse), underlines syntax errors in red like a word
processor does for misspellings, and keeps track of your classes and
every piece of information about them (it recalls that info as you use
the class and stuff). I also like that it will integrate with your
phpdoc codes to feed back information to you as you type, as well as
integrate with phpdocumentor software. It even has a built in MySQL
client: it connects to your MySQL server, and you can run queries and
do some simple stuff.
It even has some syntax highlighting for (x)HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
It does not have an HTML preview mode like Dreamweaver, but I don't
really miss that.
It must be spectacular if the server your website is hosted on has
Zend Platform installed, because then you can remotely debug and view
server messages (sort of a log of stuff). It comes with an extension
for Firefox and IE that has buttons to start the remote debugger and
stuff after you navigate to a page. I haven't gotten a chance to play
with these features.
The only thing I miss when using this is Dreamweaver's superior
project-oriented FTP client. I think that's something that is taken
for granted by Dreamweaver users. The FTP client in Zend Studio is a
bit slow, it implies that you either access your project files
remotely or work on files locally and debug them only (it's
complicated to use some files both locally and remotely at once), and
it doesn't work with all servers (I'm using a separate FTP client now,
which I hate doing).
Zend Studio is a Java application, and I think it is slow sometimes.
There seem to be a few flaws in it, but nothing that can't be worked
around. It does integrate somewhat with other Zend software, and I'd
like to try the built in PHP Documenter some time. It's important to
try the free trial before buying this to make sure it suits your needs.
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