The Search for the Perfect PHP IDE (or Bigfoot)
If you know me at all then you know I’m a big fan of MonsterQuest and MysteryQuest on the history channel. Yeah, sometimes the "cheese" is a bit over the top, but it’s always very interesting to see how they try to find real monsters, or conspiracies and scientifically prove them. Personally I think Bigfoot is an Alien but who’s asking.
So, lately my search for a really good IDE for PHP has felt like the search for "Bigfoot". Lots of "sightings" that turn out to be disappointments. Now granted I come from a Visual Studio background which has pretty decent tools for everything. So that has colored my judgment. I’ve also used Dreamweaver quite a bit but only the coding part.
So what are my criteria:
- Syntax Coloring
- Code Completion (a.k.a. Intellisense)
- HTML/CSS Code Completion. I can’t remember every attribute of both HTML and CSS (who could)
- Code Folding
- Integrated FTP sync.
- Code Snippets Library
Sounds fairly simple right? Think again…
First I tried Aptana but it was so complex trying to figure out where this tool was, or that tool. It uses "views" and to me changing the IDE all around is really confusing.
Next I gave Netbeans a try and I have to say that I like it the best of all the free ones I tried but it is still confusing.
PhpED from NuSphere has some great built in tools. But sadly some of them don’t work with CSS or HTML. Code Navigator in particular.
I really, really like phpDesigner 7, it does almost everything I need. But the lack of code folding is very frustrating. Working with Ecommerce files that are huge is a pain.
So, I’m back to using WeBuilder 2010. Great HTML/CSS tools, built in FTP publishing, PHP code completing (sort of). But it’d be nice to have the debugging tools built in. I’m happy for now, but I’d really like to see some improvement in this area.