The best IDEs - my opinion

[mmichaelh613]

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't find Dreamweaver useful for PHP

Originally Posted by kneighbour

I have tried (I think) every editor listed on this website. Most are ok in one area or another, but then poor in others. It is quite frustrating! Here are the top editors that I think deserve extra attention..

1. PSPAD (www.pspad.com) - free editor!
The only weak functions are
- very basic code beautifer
- basic multilanguage colour coding, but supports a lot of languages
- no tag editor

2. WeBuilder 2006 (www.blumentals.net) - commercial
This does practically everything that you want - except it has a poor FTP interface. If you are only editing a small number of files, or the files are local, then this is an almost perfect editor.

3. Zend Studio (commercial)
Pretty good. Very good for debugging code. But no tag editor, and pretty slow.

4. Dreamweaver MX (commercial)
This actually does everything I want. Except not well. The FTP interface is perfect - except it is too slow to use! and it does silly things - like uploading all the "linked" files - even when you tell it not to. It it like this throughout - little things either do not seem to work, or just seems clumsy.


None of the others do enough of what I want for me to consider them.
I need
- good FTP interface
- context sensitive help (ie link to PHP help, etc).
- multi-language colour coding
- tag editor (not essential, but very useful)
- code beautifer (must be multilangage capable ie HTML/PHP)
- code explorer (ie list PHP functions)
- bracket matching/highlighting (essential!!)