What's a good PHP program?

[Orbit45244]

Well, my trial for Macromedia Dreamweaver is up tomorrow, and even though it's nice I don't plan to buy it.  I used to use Wordpad, but going back to using Wordpad after I used Dreamweaver would be torture.  So what I'm asking is if somebody could reccommend a good PHP program.

Thanks,
Orbit45244

[Remaker]

For php programming you need just notepad and an apache with php server...
(But, a nice tool is dzsoft php editor)

[Anguz]

I'm happy with Edit Plus.

[Thantos]

VIM

[kegobeer]

I use UltraEdit32.  Great app.

[dtm.exe]

I highly recommend ConTEXT.  That's [Unknown]'s favorite as well .

www.context.cx

[H]

I highly recommend ConTEXT.  That's [Unknown]'s favorite as well .

www.context.cx

Looks interesting

[yellow1912]

I use Zend, pretty neat.

[matera]

Crimson Editor
PHPDesigner

[1MileCrash]

editplus 2 here.

dreamweaver sucks.

[RyanJones]

Crimson Editor and HTM-Kit are what I use

Cheers,

Ryan Jones

[sm2k]

Dreamweaver is an unfortunate program.

For PHP+HTML projects, it's really the best I've ever used.  It's the only application that gets project management right, with the ability to work on local files and publish quickly to remote and test servers.  Its sychronization feature is a godsend.  It has code completion and hints for PHP, plus hints for HTML and CSS (such as popping up a list of styles when completing an id attribute), which can really speed things up for someone like me with virtual ADD.   

What you have to avoid with Dreamweaver is editing via the WYSIWYG pane.  How it decides which tags its going to use and where it's going to use them is one of the great mysteries of the universe.  It becomes almost impossible to produce valid xhtml, and its formatting is a mess to edit by hand.  Another thing to avoid is using its template system, as something as simple as leaving a div open in your editable region can confuse the hell out of it, causing it to drop all of your changes.  It's best just to use server side includes...I just use PHP includes to mimic a template system which is much more reliable.  Its programming features are pretty weak making debugging less than fun.

HTML-Kit is a pretty good program, but tries to do way too much.  It doesn't do code hints.  Most of the plugins are amature at best.  It completely gets project management wrong, basically making it necessary to manually publish files unless you like working directly from the remote server which is dangerous.

PHP Designer shows a lot of potential, but is buggy.  On my system it crashes every time I shut it down, losing my settings.  It almost gets project management right with a seperation between local files and remote files, but publishing is drag & drop, and not intelligent drag & drop.  It does have code hints which is very nice.  For HTML it's not that great.  I prefer to drop PHP into HTML inline...and this is really where all the "PHP editors" are weak, focusing only on PHP.  You know it's kind of funny, the one thing that really turned me off about PHP Designer is pretty trivial...when you highlight some text and hit the search & replace feature, the highlighted text doesn't appear in the find box automatically.  Drives me batty!

Eclipse with PHPEclipse is pretty good, but massive and complicated and really no better than Emacs.  Good editing features and the ability to debug properly, but nothing above that.  No code hints.  Weak HTML.  Project management is geared more towards the standard programming model and not appropriate for web development.  One feature I love about it is a feature that I got used to a decade ago running Emacs: parenthesis and bracket matching.  Invaluable!


So nothing I've ever tried gets everything right.  There's no program that completely combines all the best features of a good programming IDE *with* the ease of use features that are important to a web developer.  You're either stuck in a traditional build environment or an environment that's geared towards web output.  Dreamweaver is the program that comes closest.

[nokonium]

Bloc recommended that I try PHP Expert Editor, I now use that all the time. I also have PHP 5 installed so that PHP Expert Editor can then check your syntax for you.

Another useful program I came across via the Bloc Zone, is WinMerge, this is for comparing files and highlighting the differences.

[arod]

myself, i use zend studio.
the editor is far from being good, but it has some nice features. i use it because its part of the zend ide, and the part i really need is the debugger.

anyone here tried komodo? (another ide with debugger)?
they have versions for mac, linux and windoze.
just curious...

[Leipe Po]

blowfish is a good one

[H]

blowfish is a good one

Is there a working windows port of this yet?

Last time I checked the windows port was in alpha stage and only available if you compiled it yourself

[Parham]

I'm hearing a lot of good things about PHP Designer

[nokonium]

I tried PHP Designer 2005 but thought its search function let it down.

[Leipe Po]

blowfish is a good one

Is there a working windows port of this yet?

Last time I checked the windows port was in alpha stage and only available if you compiled it yourself

donno, i'm a linux fan myself witch is great for developing php and mysql, as windows causes unexpected problems

[Parham]

blowfish is a good one

Is there a working windows port of this yet?

Last time I checked the windows port was in alpha stage and only available if you compiled it yourself

donno, i'm a linux fan myself witch is great for developing php and mysql, as windows causes unexpected problems

I'm very curious what exactly you mean by this.  Can you elaborate?