Best PHP Editor?

[homercles337]

Im wondering what you guys think is the best *free* PHP editor?

History: I did a lot of web development about 6 or 7 years ago. All of the fun stuff was PHP, CSS, MySQL--i hated JS with a passion. Well, after spending a few hours at the pub i agreed to do the site for a close friend's wedding page. Stupid mistake since my plate is already full. Anyway, i will find the time to do it. I used to use PHPed, but i think it got bought up.

I like all the usual stuff that comes with using an IDE, but i seem to remember having to have a local server running to test code against. Is there now an IDE that will do the parsing? I suppose this is kind of wysiwyg.

Disclaimer: I have already looked into theknot.com, but during that first drunken conversation i told them to get their own domain. Which they did. I also already have a host lined up.

 

[Markbnj]

In before the notepad users .

I use ScITE for everything when I am not in either Eclipse or VS2008.

 

[derdrache]

Textpad is free mostly and has a great php script highlighter.

Dreamweaver and GoLive have some limited functionality with local server preview rendering. Limited is the key.

Also, for js haters, try looking into things like MooTools and Shadowbox.js for some really cool js tools that you can embed in your pages easily. There's also the FCKEditor to make WYSIWYG text editors. Js has come a long way.

 

[jjones]

I used to use PHPed years ago, so I know what you're used to using for your IDE. I'd recommend Dreamweaver and a WAMP install; it's what I mirgrated to from PHPed about 4 years or so ago. In fact, I'm pretty sure you can still use the old PHPed Tech platform for your apache/php if you wanted to. I don't recommend it though. Doing a straight install of Apache/PHP/MySQL on windows is pretty easy nowadays and I install it on all my machines at build.

@ derdrache: What do you mean by limited? Are you talking about design view in DW? If so, that doesn't apply when you have the web server already installed on your machine and you just preview in the browser. DW also lets you specify as many browsers as you want to work with.

Edit: Sorry, you did say free, so I guess that rules out DW. There is a product called WeBuilder that has a 30 day free trial. It's $50.00 if you decide to buy. That program was very good and I recommend you check it out. You might also check out PHP Designer. I remember that was was pretty good too and I believe they have a simplified free version.

 

[troytime]

if you have to stay with free, i'd probably say aptana

i gave up on free a long time ago though.
zend studio is my editor of choice at the moment (for php)

 

[clamum]

I use PSPad for any scripting or simple text editing, and it works well.

 

[Cooler]

Well I use Notepad++ for just about anything. But then again my boss love vi for coding.

 

[Cogman]

VIM FTW!

 

[George P Burdell]

A combination of vim, TextPad and e.

 

[Ibn Saeed]

Zend Eclipse for PHP, Apatana Eclipse for Javascript, PSpad for the rest.

 

[Ibn Saeed]

Double post
Sorry.

 

[eakers]

my boyfriend swears by devPHP but I just use notepad++ for everything I don't do in visual studio

 

[homercles337]

thanks for the replies. I like eclipse, but is it really free? also what about devphp?

 

[eakers]

devphp is free http://devphp.sourceforge.net/ I have no idea how it compares to eclipse for php... I think I might give that a go tonight actually