PhpED Review

I’ve been in search of a good PHP editor for almost 3 years.  In the end I always go back to using Notepad++ or good old Homesite.  I really think I prefer C# to PHP overall because of Visual Studio. I tried PhpED a while back and although it looked promising back then it wasn’t enough to compel me use full time or spend any money on.  I decided recently to give it another try.

Likes:

• Right click a include-> Got To File.  Brings up the function calls, class definition files etc… This worked 75% of the time.  When it didn’t work I wasn’t told why.
• Speed, so far this thing is fast which is great, a couple hang ups but nothing major.
• File Explorer is really fast.
• Recognizes mono fonts differently, gives you a separate list of these.  A nice extra touch.
• Highlight parts of variable is smart enough to automatically highlight the rest of the variable.
• Intellisense picks up on dynamic variables.
• Code Templates, they have the standard templates built in but also a way for you to add your own as needed.

Dislikes:

• Save a New file, always wants me to put in a project, I prefer to just save it to a file location.
• Project.  Maybe I haven’t spent enough time with this program and maybe saving things via projects improves "Go to File", but I prefer to edit files via file explorer.

Overall

This is the best PHP ide I’ve tried by far.  It doesn’t seem clunky like Zend Studio.  The list price is $299.00 and well worth the investment for you PHP developers.