I just noticed in a web advert that the NetBeans IDE has a PHP plug-in. Having still not settled on a PHP editor/IDE that I’m really comfortable with, I downloaded NetBeans and will be giving it a test drive.
My first impression is that it’s peppier than the various Eclipse-based editors I’ve tried (including Apatana most recently). I still have a lot of digging, experimenting, and reading to do to find out how well it meets my needs; but I thought I’d post this now in case anyone beside me also thought NetBeans was only for Java and might like to take a look at it, too.
I don’t like NetBeans or Eclipse. They’re both written in Java and extremely resource consuming and slow. For PHP developing I prefer a simple text editor (well, function like syntax highlighting, automatic tabbing, code folding are welcome). On Windows I used to use UltraEdit-32 (I know it’s not free), but Notepad++ is very good, too. On Linux I use gEdit (the default GNOME text editor). It has syntax highlighting and automatic indentation builtin (doesn’t have code folding though, but that’s not a big problem for me), so I’ve got all I need. Also, there are lots of plugins for it that can do lots of things. Other good Linux code editors (in order of complexity): Geany, Anjuta. These are just the ones I played with :).
I love the latest NetBeans IDE. You can quickly import javascript frameworks and libraries into your PHP apps and do line by line debugging on the fly. It will also parse the source files for “documentation” to feed you during auto complete.