I have been searching for the perfect web development IDE for some time now. I first started coding with notepad when all I wrote was HTML. Clearly, that was a relationship not meant to last.
Eventually I discovered Notepad++ and the wonderful syntax highlighting that it does. However, I got frustrated when I started working with server-side code and eventually moved to Netbeans, which I have been using for about a year now.
I enjoy using Netbeans quite a bit. The syntax highlighting is fantastic, the ability to push a button and step through your server side code (once you get your apache server set up properly). And the diff engine on it is fantastic for viewing code side by side. I dislike the learning curve (it seems awfully steep to me), and I've recently wanted to try Zen coding, which I can't do with Netbeans.
So, I am looking for an IDE that allows stepping through server side code, and the ability to install plugins such as zencoding. A good Diff engine would be fantastic (but not a dealbreaker), and making code versioning a bit easier would also be points for it.
Here are some choices:
EngInSite
Eclipse
Komodo
phpDesigner
Zend Studio
While I myself enjoy the simpler things in life such as VI or even notepad++. Your problem is going to arise when you want to do debugging, as you found it requires an apache plugin. My best recommendation to you would to look at zend studio although it is not free. I've used it with non zend framework apps, and its pretty handy.
As Stijntjhe mentioned zend studio , if you want free software , use eclipse or eclipse pdt.
Netbeans also could be good for it.
Hi recently i have started the same journey. And my main choices where eclipse with WPT, Aptana en Netbeans. And After a while I returned to Netbeans 7 beta. Which suits me perfectly fine. It is helps me in a robust way which in the end matter the most to me.
The Zeus IDE has support for HTML, CSS and Zen coding.
Zend Studio for Eclipse, I used it a while ago when I was still a windows user.
Html-Kit is also a good editor but if you're more advanced I prefer the first one.
Adobe Dreamweaver is also an excellent Web IDE. It is pricey (if you purchase it).
The best versions are MX2004, CS4, and CS5.
Surprised no one has mentioned UEStudio yet. It is not free, but is one of the more powerful editors out there.
And I second netbeans as well.
I'm developing PHP apps that leverage several frameworks (though not the Zend Framework yet...) and I make good use of Javascript (mostly jQuery). All mark-up is XHTML, of course, with CSS, etc. I'm looking to move beyond the beautiful simplicity of Notepad++. I'm using Windows Vista. I'm trying to decide between Zend Studio 7 or Dreamweaver CS4.
They seem pretty on par with each other, but the price points are different. I've seen a few lists of "Good things about Dreamweaver" or "Good things about Zend Studio" but I've yet to find a head-to-head comparison.
Any suggestions on the next IDE to move up to? In addition to the language support and basic error checking (syntax-related, like missing semi-colons or something), I'm looking for two things that are absolutely necessary:
"Projects" or something similar --
open a project and it gives a tree
listing of all related files
beneath. I'm pretty sure both
support this.
As lightweight as possible. Vista's a hog as it is,
and I'd like to have a lightweight
enough IDE that having 10 files open
and moving between them won't drain
my resources.
Other niceties:
Automatic documentation (not sure
what the phrase is, the stuff in
comments above functions with the
#parm stuff).
Templating.
SVN
support.
FTP/File upload
capabilities.
... And, if Zend or Dreamweaver isn't the thing -- any suggestions about what is?
i would suggest Netbease IDE PHP 6.7.
In is free , not so huge like Zend Studio or Dreamweaver.
It has support for
Syntax-highlighting
Templates
PHP Unit
JQuery
Dojo
Code completion for JS / PHP / HTML
Version Control (SVN)
and much more..
Download Netbeans
I suggest try few open source alternatives
Eclipse PDT - Is very good for php but currently don't good support jquery.
Aptana - I build on top of Eclipse and has good support for JQuery. It also has page preview feature.
You can configure different debuggers to work with them like PDT, Zend, Xdebug... all of them can be configured easily.
Zned Studio is also build on top of Eclipse, I have never used that so I can't say anything about it.
I had the same question about year ago. From then I tried many different IDE environments and a found that the most suited one was Netbeans.
The deal with Netbeans was that due to some performance issues it was the solidest IDE there.
As sad as it may be, from my perspective it is much better product than the Zend Studio For Eclipse 6 or 7 witch costs about 400$, (trust me I tried it since I unfortunately wasted the money on licence before I actually tested all available options).
It has the best code completion inspection and assistance, witch you can check yourself by downloading these two IDE-s and trying to code complete chaining method calls.
Support for unit testing is also something worth mentioning since it works. ZDE also has that feature but it is not that stable since sometimes it wont run.
JavaScript support is also solid, actually I think that is better than one in the Aptana, but the only downside of it is that is pretty slow when working with huge libraries such as Dojo. Now some may argue about that but the fact is that (at least with Dojo&dijit) library it has the best code inspection, and fine code completion support.
My opinion is that the only downside is the lack of support for Zend Debugger, and not so intuitive debugging variable, callstack and breakpoint windows.
For now my felling is that this is the best PHP IDE available, something like the Zend Studio 5.5 when it came out.
Netbeans is the clear choice here as long as you aren't limited on memory. It's got a good-sized footprint, but there's no product that can compare...not even Zend.
That being said, the new Aptana 3 was supposed to bring back full-fledged PHP support that was removed from Aptana 2+ (PDT just isn't a good plugin folks), but now that Appcelerator has taken over Aptana I'm a bit skeptical that the focus toward PHP will continue.
Yes Aptana Studio is good for PHP and also Netbeans. I like Netbeans more because it feels more solid. But Aptana has propably the best auto-complete support for javascript of all editors, but I don't really like the appearance of the editor - looks too 'macish'.
I would recommend both actually, side by side as each has its strengths and weaknesses
Zend Studio is excellent for:
PHP class coding enables you to view and browse class hierarchies, provides autocomplete, one click access to PHP Manual
unit testing
debugging
profiling
version control integration
Dreamweaver CS4 for
HTML coding
CSS editing
Other visual design
To me, I still have that impression of Dreamweaver being drag and drop for web "designers" and creating horrible html output that does that validate sometimes. If this still happens with DW CS4, then I would definitely go with Zend Studio.
Zend Studio actually supports with all the Eclipse Plugins that I would like to add for unit testing and continuous integration.
But Aptana and NetBeans are free!!! Which I think Zend editor is not, haven't tried that. I like Netbeans!!! I like Dreamweaver CS4 and use it on daily basis at my job(but not coding php). It's quite nice but I feel it's strength is the help you get with css properties. Besides that it's not better than Netbeans. if you like a shiny cool look like DW so go for Aptana, it has the best javascript autocompletion - really cool!! Saves a ton of time!! Even auto-completion for your JQuery code and other JS frameworks I think.
Actually Dreamweaver has become more of a dev tool (but I'm not entirely convinced of that). It has integration with Subversion which is kind of cool.
I like NetBeans because I've done some Java coding in it before and now it has support for PHP which is real nice, and it feels like a real dev. IDE.
But DW has this cool gray colors..
Which is the best way to debug an PHP application as we can debug ASP.NET application with Visual Studio ?
I'm using the IDE Eclipse PDT, which can use the PHP extension Xdebug to provide debugging functionnalities, kind of the same way as Visual Studio (a bit less powerful, maybe), which gives you the ability to do things like :
step by step
step in / out of functions / methods
see the content of variables
have a stack trace showing where you are
That's really nice to debug big programs -- especially ones you didn't write, to understand how they work (or don't ^^ )
It can also use the extension "zend debugger" ; but I've never tried this one.
Even without using a debugger like the one provided by PDT, Xdebug is a nice extension to have on a development server : it gives nice stack traces when there's an error/exception, it allows you to get nice-looking var_dump's output, ...
It can also be used to get profiling data, which you can visualize with tools like KCacheGrind, WinCacheGrind, or Webgrind.
But note it is hurting performance badly, so it definitly should not be installed on a production server !
PHP Console is good if you want to debug WEB 2.0 (AJAX) web-projects.
PHPEd is great for this, but you have to pay for it.
xdebug works, but you have to install it on the server. I haven't used it, but it seems to have a good reputation.
Some IDEs (Aptana/Eclipse + PHP springs to mind) then can interface with xdebug.
XDebug with Eclipse PDT is the best I've seen. Here is a tutorial on setting this up:
http://devzone.zend.com/article/2930-Debugging-PHP-applications-with-xdebug
NetBeans also has debug capabilities. From the website:
You can debug scripts and web pages, either locally or remotely. The NetBeans PHP debugger integration allows you to map server paths to local paths to enable remote debugging.
I use the Zend debugger and after trouble getting it working (it was a remote setup with he server and the development machine both virtual!) - it made a huge difference to my development efficiency. If you are converting from Visual Studio you will find quite a few things different and even difficult. It is worth sticking with it and mastering howewever - I can now set breakpoints in arbitary pages and navigate to them just like the user, stop and examine locals etc and then step through what happens - put simply now I can find bugs whereas without it I was guessing. Also see Developing with PHP and Eclipse (Galileo) which I found helpful.
PHP storm is a good one from JetBrains.
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I'm a PHP developer and now I use Notepad++ for code editing, but lately I've been searching for an IDE to ease my work.
I've looked into Eclipse, Aptana Studio and several others, but I'm not really decided, they all look nice enough but a bit complicated. I'm sure it'll all get easy once I get used to it, but I don't want to waste my time.
This is what I'm looking for:
FTP support
Code highlight
SVN support would be great
Ruby and JavaScript would be great
For PHP I would recommend PhpStorm.
It supports FTP/SFTP synchronization, integrates well with Subversion, CVS, Mercurial and even with Git. Also, it supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript and handles language-mixing well like SQL or HTML blocks inside PHP code, JSON, etc.
But if you need Ruby you can try another IDE - RubyMine with same capabilities but for Ruby.
NetBeans. Check out 7.0.1.
It supports FTP/SFTP synchronization, integrates well with Subversion, CVS, Mercurial and even with Git (with plugin). Also, it supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, popular frameworks and more.
And its free.
Too bad no one mentioned phpDesigner. It's really the best IDE I've came across (and I believe I've tried them all).
The main pro of this one is that it's NOT Java based. This keeps the whole thing quick.
Features:
Intelligent Syntax Highlighter - automatic switch between PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript depending on your position!
PHP (both version 4 and 5 are supported)
SQL (MySQL, MSSQL 2000, MSSQL 7, Ingres, Interbase 6, Oracle, Sybase)
HTML/XHTML
CSS (both version 1 and 2.1 are supported)
JavaScript
VBScript
Java
C#
Perl
Python
Ruby
Smarty
PHP:
Support for both PHP 4 and PHP 5
Code Explorer for PHP (includes, classes, extended classes, interfaces, properties, functions, constants and variables)
Code Completion (IntelliSense) for PHP - code assist as you type
Code Tip (code hint) for PHP - code assist as you type
Work with any PHP frameworks (access classes, functions, variables, etc. on the fly)
PHP object oriented programming (OOP) including nested objects
Support for PHP heredoc
Enclose strings with single- or double quotes, linefeed, carriage return or tabs
PHP server variables
PHP statement templates (if, else, then, while…)
Powerful PHP Code Beautifier with many configurations and profile support
phpDocumentor wizard
Add phpDocumentor documentation to functions and classes with one click!
phpDocumentor tags
Comment or uncomment with one click!
Jump to any declaration with filtering by classes, interfaces, functions, variables or constants
Debug (PHP):
Debug with Xdebug
Breakpoints
Step by step debugging
Step into
Step over
Run to cursor
Run until return
Call stack
Watches
Context variables
Evaluate
Profiling
Multiple sessions
Evaluation tip
Catch errors
Are you sure you're looking for an IDE? The features you're describing, along with the impression of being too complicated that you got from e.g. Aptana, suggest that perhaps all you really want is a good editor with syntax highlighting and integration with some common workflow tools. For this, there are tons of options.
I've used jEdit on several platforms successfully, and that alone puts it above most of the rest (many of the IDEs are cross-platform too, but Aptana and anything Eclipse-based is going to be pretty heavy-weight, if full-featured). jEdit has ready-made plugins for everything on your list, and syntax highlighting for a wide range of languages. You can also bring up a shell in the bottom of your window, invoke scripts from within the editor, and so forth. It's not perfect (the UI is better than most Java UIs, but not perfect yet I don't think), but I've had good luck with it, and it'll be a hell of a lot simpler than Aptana/Eclipse.
That said, I do like Aptana quite a bit for web development, it does a lot of the grunt work for you once you're over the learning curve.
Eclipse PDT is very nice.
I'm always amazed that more people don't use ActiveState Komodo.
It has the best debugging facilities of any PHP IDE I have tried, is a very mature product and has more useful features than you can shake a stick at. Of note, it has a fantastic HTTP inspector, Javascript debugger and Regular Expression Toolkit. You can get it so that it steps through your PHP, then you see your Javascript running, and then see your HTTP traffic going out over the wire!
It also comes in free (Komodo Edit) and open (OpenKomodo versions).
Oh, and if you don't always hack just on PHP, it's designed as a multi-language editor and rocks for Ruby and Python too.
I've been a happy customer for around 5 years.
There's no "best" IDE, only better and worse ones.
Right now I'm trying to settle in with Aptana. It has a lot of cruft that I don't want, like "Jaxer" doodads all over the place. It's reasonably fast, but chokes on large files when syntax highliting is on. I have not been able to figure out how to set up PHP debugging. Three good things about Aptana: easy plugin installations, very fast and intuitive Subversion plugins, ligning fast file search.
I tried Eclipse PDT and Zend for Eclipse, but they have nightmare levels of interface cruft. Installing plugins is a living horror of version mismatches and cryptic error messages.
I also use Komodo (they bought us licenses at work). Komodo has a very intuitive interface, but is ridiculously slow, chokes on medium sized files with syntax highlighting. File search is intuitive, but rather slow. Subversion integration is not that great - slow and buggy. If not for slowness, I would have probably stuck with Komodo, especially for the debugger.
To get you started, here is a list of PHP Editors (Wikipedia).
For PHP in particular, PHPEdit is the best, and I tried and worked in some of them including, Dreamweaver, Elipse, Emacs, Notepad++, NetBeans, UltraEdit ...
Geany is a great lightweight editor -- like Notepad++ for Linux, only better. I find this, combined with a few shell scripts and symlinks for linking modules into a web source tree, make developing on Linux easy and fun.
I love JetBrains IDEs. For PHP it is JetBrains PHPStorm.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-php-ide/index.html
Personally, I love Notepad++... :D . The above link compares some of the better IDEs and the best ones aren't free.
I'd recommend Komodo 4.4 though (I used the trial version) since it was awesome. Better than Notepad++, but not free... :(
I would recommend Zend IDE for the integrated debugger.
I'm using Zend Studio. It has decent syntax highlighting, code completion and such. But the best part is that you can debug PHP code, either with a standalone PHP interpreter, or even on a live web server as you "browse" along your pages. You get the usual Visual Studio keys, breakpoints, watches and call stack, which is almost indispensable for bug hunting. No more "alert()"-cluttered debugged source code :)
Have you looked at Delphi for PHP (<http://www.codegear.com/products/delphi/php>) ?
Joe Stagner of Microsoft really likes Delphi for PHP.
He says it here: "[Delphi for PHP] 2.0 is the REAL DEAL and I LOVE IT !"
Eclipse with PDT.
I use and like Rapid PHP.
What features of an IDE do you want? Integrated build engine? Debugger? Code highlighting? IntelliSense? Project management? Configuration management? Testing tools? Except for code highlighting, none of these are in your requirements.
So my suggestion is to use an editor that supports plugins, like Notepad++ (which you are already used to). If there's not already a plugin that does what you want, then write one.
I use Coda on Mac OS X.
There is a new guy in town, PhpStorm from JetBrains. You use it and I bet you will forget all the other editors. It's bit pricey though, unfortunately.
RadPHP (previously known as Delphi for PHP) is the best.
All are good, but only Delphi for PHP (RadPHP 3.0) has a designer, drag and drop controls, GUI editeor, huge set of components including Zend Framework, Facebook, database, etc. components. It is the best in town.
RadPHP is the best of all; It has all the features the others have. Its designer is the best of all. You can design your page just like Dreamweaver (more than Dreamweaver).
If you use RadPHP you will feel like using ASP.NET with Visual Studio (but the language is PHP).
It's too bad only a few know about this.
Aptana supports this and I use it for all of my web development now.
Hands down the best IDE for PHP is NuSphere PHPEd. It's a no contest. It is so good that I use WINE to run it on my Mac. PHPEd has an awesome debugger built into it that can be used with their local webserver (totally automatic) or you can just install the dbg module for XAMPP or any other Apache you want to run.
The best IDE for PHP in my opinion is Zend Studio (which itself is based on Eclipse PDT). Note that in this case "best" does not necessarily mean "good." It is slow and a bit buggy, but even so, it's still the best option for PHP programmers. I've tried a ton of PHP editors over the years and I haven't yet found one that works great.
Komodo IDE would be my second choice. My only problem with Komodo is that the autocomplete is not as good. With properly structured apps where you use phpDoc to document return types etc., it should be alright. But I work on a project that doesn't really do that and Komodo can't read across files to know that $user is a User object for example.
Personally everything that is based uppon Eclipse or NetBeans is an overkill, the GUI is crap and the performance is soooo slow compared to other alternatives.
If you're willing to pay I would suggest Zend IDE (version 5.5, not 6 because it's based on Eclipse) and EditPlus for a more lightweight yet powerfull code editor.
If you're looking for free alternatives, or if you code in other languages other than PHP, OpenKomodo is a really nice IDE with almost all the features (no SVN neither CVS) that you require, the only con I see about OpenKomodo is that sometimes it messes my code indentation, but then again I don't use it on a very regular basis.
As for a free lightweight alternative: Notepad++. =)
My personal preference is Eclipse (with various plug-ins) as I am developing in several languages (PHP, Java, and Ruby) and this way I am always used to interface and keyboard shortcuts. This is not a minor thing as you become very productive this way.
I haven't used Aptana, but will (hopefully) soon - it does look interesting, though.
For others IDEs I have used: jEdit (for little Java), Notepad++ (still for some scripting and short test code runs).
And for the features You asked: Eclipse support many source code version servers (Subclipse); your project can be on a Samba share; ZendDebugger/xdebug for debugging.
I've tried Eclipse PDT, with some success. Aptana is also pretty good, or if you are doing a lot of AJAX stuff, it's great. Your mileage may vary, however, depending on what additional plugins you want to use with them.
PHPEclipse is as close to Eclipse java power as it could get. Eclipse PDT is much weaker (last time I checked).
I'm using PHPDesigner but I will go for Eclipse PDT. I was always against Eclipse until few months ago when I have one Java project to finish... Great IDE
Now I can't imagine one day without Eclipse. :)
Have you tried NetBeans 6? Zend Studio and NetBeans 6 are the best IDEs with PHP support you'll come across and NetBeans is free.