Today I thought I’d discuss one of the best free/paid PHP IDE’s out there; one I’ve been using for nearly 3 years now. That IDE would be, PHP Designer.
I’ve tried many IDE’s in my day, I believe the count stood at 6 before finding PHP Designer; it was like a “godsend”. It had features that blew most paid IDE’s out of the water.
Starting with PHP Designer 2007, Michael (the creator of the software) decided to make it commercial, while also releasing a personal (free) version. Even though the free version lacks some Pro features, it still beats every IDE I’ve come across.
Myself, I bought the Professional version - the $53 USD was well worth it. And I’d encourage ALL of you to give it a try by downloading the personal version, if you like it (I know you will), it’s easy to upgrade to the Professional version.
More about PHP Designer:
phpDesigner 2007 Professional is a powerful PHP Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for both beginners and professional developers that enhances the process of editing, analyzing and publishing applications and websites powered by PHP and other web languages.
Boost your productivity and simplify complex coding projects through an intelligent set of editing tools that includes full support for PHP 5.2, syntax highlighters, intelligent nested code completion, code tips that are displayed as you type, a project manager, code snippets, large built-in code-libraries, bracket/tag highlighting (matched and unmatched), and numerous tools and wizards to speed up your development.
The strength of PHP lies in its ability to embed it into, and together with, other web languages and technologies. Therefore, phpDesigner 2007 Professional not only supports PHP, but also other web languages such as HTML, MySQL, XML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, Java, C#, Perl, Python and Ruby!
Support for WAMP/LAMP and AJAX developers is provided through intelligent syntax highlighting that automatically switches between syntax highlighters for PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript depending on your position in the document, and dims the rest of the code!
Getting detailed information about more than 3000 native PHP functions on the fly makes the learning curve for PHP as easy and short as possible.
Jump to any declaration in both source and project files with filtering by class, interface, function, variable or constant.
Easily document your code with phpDocumentor, the standard documentation tool for the PHP language, with the built-in phpDocumentor Wizard.
The philosophy behind phpDesigner 2007 Professional is that it be enjoyable to use for hours and hours for both beginners and professional developers through an easy-to-use, intuitive, customizable and tabbed interface.
The professional edition is for any commercial, business, educational, institutional or governmental purpose!
Go ahead, give it a try!
