TSW Webcoder is great in so many ways that i have difficulty finding a place to begin. I'm not sure what it was exactly that caused me to fall so in love w/ this IDE, but i developed a bond w/ this PHP MySQL Integrated Design Tool in such a way that, now that i'm a Linux user, I find myself even going back to XP every so often to hop on TSW WebCoder 2005 for the purpose of quickly generating the PHP SQL scripting necessary for effective and accurate INSERT, SELECT, and UPDATE statements. I believe that, as far as Educational / PHP Learning-based Editors are concerned, TSW Webcoder is one of the best learning tools out there-- even though it's not marketed as such. I was practically a beginner when i started using Webcoder. As I grew to more advanced practice of PHP scripting, i began to discover some of the editor's integrated PHP - MySQL functions. I realized that when i'd type code, variables from earlier lines would appear in the auto-complete, a convenience when i began to use many variable names-- especially those names which were ultimately similar-- it's easy to pick from a drop-down auto-complete feature such as WebCoder's, and similarly, the built-in PHP Code library provides a virtual PHP training experience! How delighted i was to come upon a bit of a script, thinking as i was typing, what would be the function i'd use here... and suddenly, as i paused to consider it, i noticed that WebCoder had read my mind! For example, if i wanted to code a MySQL database query, i might type mysql_ and by the time i've made it to the underscore, WebCoder might, unobtrusively, suggest mysql_query, mysql_num_rows, etc.-- typically the most useful, practical functions. Don't misunderstand-- WebCoder isn't writing your code for you, but merely suggesting some items which you might use (however, a beginner should discipline herself to use the real-time auto-complete, and PHP Function code suggestions not as a crutch, but as a coding enhancement, and a means to an end of more efficient productivity). Although Tanggaard's integration of a Bradbury-TopStyle-esque CSS Recognition is in close competition, i'd have to say that my favorite aspect of WebCoder is its PHP and MySQL Database integration. As a beginner, i found it to be a somewhat laborious, tedious process to write out so many lines, with deliberate precision lest i might err, such as
Code:
$datacell = stripslashes(htmlentities($r['datacell']));
just to get a few items out of, or similarly, into or updated in a database-- that it took me so long to move from task to task, and project to project-- in the beginning. Once I became familiar w/ WebCoder's MySQL Query Wizard, i realized that i could conceptualize more complex scripting because i could breeze through the database extraction processes. I'm afraid i'm writing too much here, so i'll stop there. I think you get the idea. Enjoy-- it's a FREE trial ( i think like 25 days-- but it's kinda weird... you get actually that many "startup" chances-- in other words, you could get many more than 25 days if you leave the thing running over-night. likewise, however, beware not to startup and shutdown so many times because, technically, you could use them all up in five minutes if you tried (by launching, shut down, launch, shut-down, etc)