I use notepad for editing PHP, What am I missing?

[linmed01]

Rightly or wrongly I have always used notepad to develop my PHP applications. I have always found it very quick and easy to use BUT I know there are so many programs out there specifically designed for developing PHP apps.

I was wondering if those of you who use editors specifically for PHP could tell me what I am missing and perhaps suggest some good alternatives. I am particularly interested in features such as syntax highlighting for instance.

I'd really like to hear peoples thoughts on the subject.

Thanks!

[RetroNetro]

Hello

There is Notepad 2

It has syntax highlighting plus the same other features that you are familiar with There are some differences than that of regular NP, but all in all it is the same

Hope it helps

[killerkooki]

List of PHP Editors
That should be a pretty good list of IDEs that you can use (a little further down in that post).

Personally, I use Dreamweaver. It probably is not the best, but does the trick for me at this point of time. I have briefly tried PHP Edit, which was pretty good in terms of features, but it seemed too much at times...
I have also tried Eclipse when using Java and liked it. So perhaps using the PHP plugin for Eclipse is another alternative.

[linmed01]

I will certainly take a look at that, thanks!

[mwolfe]

Honestly, i wouldn't recommend notepad for much of anything except to quickly remove formatting from documents.. its much more difficult to use than even a halfway decent editor.. I'm surprised microsoft hasnt come up with something slightly better yet included with windows, considering the price.

Pretty much any editor is better than notepad to be quite honest. I know it uses like no resources but its lack of syntax highlighting, tabbed browsing, not to mention those huge tabs it makes when you press tab.. I have used it in the past for certain things like very small assignments, but normally it makes things much more difficult to analyze and work with.

notepad 2, is good i've heard. i use crimson editor most of the time.. Php dezigner is good and it contains some extra features for php like the ability to highlight syntax errors..

there are a lot of editors out there that are much easier to use than notepad IMHO

[linmed01]

This is great stuff, I will definately be trying some of these editors. It sound like exactly what I'm after as I don't want to start using programs like dreamweaver, just something a little more advanced than notepad! Thanks v much.

[RetroNetro]

Honestly, i wouldn't recommend notepad for much of anything except to quickly remove formatting from documents.. its much more difficult to use than even a halfway decent editor.. I'm surprised microsoft hasnt come up with something slightly better yet included with windows, considering the price.

Pretty much any editor is better than notepad to be quite honest. I know it uses like no resources but its lack of syntax highlighting, tabbed browsing, not to mention those huge tabs it makes when you press tab.. I have used it in the past for certain things like very small assignments, but normally it makes things much more difficult to analyze and work with.

notepad 2, is good i've heard. i use crimson editor most of the time.. Php dezigner is good and it contains some extra features for php like the ability to highlight syntax errors..

there are a lot of editors out there that are much easier to use than notepad IMHO

I am not a PHP guy (XHTML/CSS) but I also use Crimson Editor which supports many languages and has tabbed file browsing (the tabs are enough for me) it is small in size does not seem to use alot resources and is very handy. It also has FTP ability (which I also do not use)

[Jelena]

Hey,

I will always recommend UltraEdit as a simple yet efective editor and Zend Studio as GREAT PHP IDE. It really made my life easier when I started to use it! Zend Studio has great features that can speed up your coding.

[dbevfat]

Very fine (and free) editor: PSPad. Used to use UltraEdit, and I don't regret I switched.

[someonewhois]

I learned PHP using wordpad. The only thing you're lacking is line numbers and syntax highlighting -- line numbers to pinpoint reported errors, and syntax highlighting to see quote issues, and to just get a much easier-to-read file.

[mark_W]

I would say PHP Designer 2005 for building the bulk of an application. Although, I think notepad is fine when you are just editing a specific part of some code you have already done.

[dotDan]

http://emeditor.com

It's as fast and streamlined as notepad, but has loads of features.

[dmsuperman]

DreamWeaver is decent, but too expensive for my taste.

[SoCalled]

I use CrimsonEditor but will check out a few of the others as having a debugger would be cool.

Dreamweaver while a decent product has a tendency to bloat code. If doing a new project l genereally prototype it in dreamweaver for the look and feel, and then edit with Crimson Editor to make the beta version.

[REMIYA]

Crimson Editor

[medicjoe95]

I use PHP Designer 2005.

I used to use Dreamweaver, and Notepad. You can download PHP Designer 2005 by googling it/search on download.com.

[Snecx]

By the way, I would like to add that PHP Designer 2005 is free. A great tool.

[Archbob]

I use editpad light. Don't need syntax highlighting or any of that other stuff. To tell you the truth, it bothers me.

[Dale C]

Flippin' hec, PHP Designer looks like a cracking piece of software. If I had coded that I'd be charging a truck load, that interface must of taken months to develop.

Probably a little too complex for its own good though, the syntax highlighting is identical to Dreamweaver MX so I'm probably not going to convert. The function library is absolutely fantastic though I wish I could integrate that to Dreamweaver. The only thing is I know most of the functions I'd need to use off by heart but I may well use it as a quick resource.

What WOULD be a handy feature is if an IDE could build a list of all the functions in each of your classes and give you a quick way to call them..often I end up writing code for something forgetting I already have a function of my own to do that exact thing ...I could write a function definition list but I'm too lazy to do that ..if a program could do that for me I'd snap it up .

[SoCalled]

Just downloaded PHP Designer as l surely could do with some help finding PHP functions (am used to a couple of other programming languages). Thanks for the headsup on that product...

Dale welcome to OOP mate Same problem here...

[Young Twig]

Hello

There is Notepad 2

It has syntax highlighting plus the same other features that you are familiar with There are some differences than that of regular NP, but all in all it is the same

Hope it helps

Dude. That thing is pretty sweet. It supports heredoc!

I use SourceEdit, but I might change that to Notepad 2 actually.

[Dale C]

Dale welcome to OOP mate Same problem here...

Indeed, there is probably a well-known solution to this that I am simply unaware of.

I reckon I've wasted at least 3 hours coding methods I've already got functionality for.

Sometimes I even get already declared errors from where I've written the same function twice with exactly the same name. :'(

[Dale C]

It supports heredoc!

What is the fuss with heredoc? What's wrong with good old escaping.

[Toly]

I am not a PHP guy (XHTML/CSS) but I also use Crimson Editor which supports many languages and has tabbed file browsing (the tabs are enough for me) it is small in size does not seem to use alot resources and is very handy. It also has FTP ability (which I also do not use)

Yeah, I would recommend it as well.

I used Notepad for about three years before moving to an editor. After that, I didn't look back. I may use Notepad sometimes when I need to change something really simple, but that's about it.

I suggest you give any editor a try and see how it goes. You might feel more comfortable coding with one.

[Young Twig]

What is the fuss with heredoc? What's wrong with good old escaping.

Bleh. I don't really care for heredoc, but I used it in the past and all the editors I've used highlight it as PHP. So everytime you wrote an apostrophe (or quote), you would have to write a <!-- ' --> after it.

But I actually prefer to have a big single-quoted string.