PHP IDEs: day 2

I filed two support requests yesterday, one with PHPEdit for a popup/autocomplete behaviour I thought silly, and the other with Maguma to see if it will do code insight for files in your PHP include_path.

I’ve had replies to both: A reply to my post in the Maguma forum saying it had been forwarded to a developer; and Sebastien Hordeux, the (lead?) developer of PHPEdit replied and after exchanging a couple of emails and flash-screencaptures registered it as a bug. One up to PHPEdit for a quick response (even if the others don’t have the problem in the first place)

So far I’m using PHPEdit as my default editor and have hardly touched the others, which probably means I’m biased as it feels familiar from previous use
I installed PHP Expert Editor and Rapid PHP 2005 today. PHP Expert Editor can be crossed off immediately; it doesn’t even provide code completion for class methods when the class is in the same file, let alone in an external file.

Rapid PHP 2005 is more of an editor rather than an IDE. It’s got a lot of tools to help write HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I already have “Topstyle”:http://www.regnow.com/softsell/visitor.cgi?affiliate=46464&action=site&vendor=6598 for these which I like. All in all it’s a good tool I guess for most web developers, but not for heavy PHP development. I’ve crossed it off my list as well.

I was also shocked by this PHP Snippet provided in the Rapid PHP:

bc. for (var i=1; i=max_i; i++) {
…

If that’s PHP then I’m a fish.

What else have I explored today?

Maguma Workbench offers a code template system like PHPEdit, but I can’t find any help on how to set it up. It also has code collapsing - a wonderful feature like collapsing folder trees but for source code which allows one to navigate and explore code much faster. I’ve had this before when using a Python editor and also once when I played with gVim and loved it.

Talking of gVim… “Ian P. Christian”:http://www.pookey.co.uk suggested I try it as well, as he uses Vim entirely for authoring PHP code (and manages without a debugger). I’ve installed it, and can see a vertical learning curve ahead!

Back on the subject of Maguma, the icons don’t seem anywhere near as overbearing as yesterday. In fact being bigger it’s easier to click on them rather than another icon by mistake.

I was stupid enough to let Maguma’s installation overwrite my php.ini - and because I had to do two installations to get the licensing thingy to work it overwrote the backup of my original php.ini. Grrrr.