How do you write your code?

[spikeZ]

Krikey, nobody has said yet, better pipe up - vim.

Extraordinary, ubiquitous, compellingly simple yet complex.

Recent articles and talks mentioning vim.

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! there is this thing called progress.....
Syntax highlighting, etc etc etc - whats with all the #bash commands just to type a line in?!

[webnoob]

i use dreamweaver because i like the built-in FTP functionality. I wish someone else could replicate this functionality in a better, less-bloated editor.

You should really try phpEdit. I have started using it recently as a try-out and am loving it. Built in FTP, project management, check in and check out of files, ability to connect to MySQL DB from with the program and run queries/look at DB structure ect. There are also a few other features as well, but the main thing I use it for is a syntax highlighter with upload

[kyberfabrikken]

I wish that I could disable splash screen at startup, but that's about my only real complaint.

I'm about 99% sure that you can, if you purchase a license ... It's been a while since I ditched it for Emacs though, so I may be remembering wrong.

[BrandonK]

I'll have to look in to that. I know that I purchased a license at home and for one workstation in the office, but I've since moved computers and just installed a new version of TextPad here. I'll head home and check that out.

[kyberfabrikken]

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! there is this thing called progress.....
Syntax highlighting, etc etc etc

vim has syntax highlighting, as well as etc. etc. and etc. If you want features, then vim has thousands of extensions (And Emacs too, for the matter).

[geosite]

Holy cow, it's amazing how many types of TEXT EDITORS and FTP CLIENTS there are to choose from. These threads are never less than two pages long.

I upgraded to a Mac but haven't yet found time to play with text editors much aside from Dreamweaver. TextMate is heavily recommended, but the online demos I checked out looked awfully sophisticated. I recall another thread where somone said they couldn't understand what some of TextMate's functions were all about.

Still, I'll probably try out TextMate and Coda in the near future. BBEdit is also highly recommended for Mac.

[santouras]

Zend Studio is where it's at for coding large projects. Code completion for functions, classes, chained classes, etc etc is where it's at. If you're not using a tool that uses code completion then you're a very silly person IMO

[eightamrock]

I downloaded coda to give it a try, anyone know how to modify the auto-completion? In TM I was able to edit all my bundles for my favorite auto-complete tab settings... Can't seem to find it in Coda...

[ivanfx]

Zend Studio is where it's at for coding large projects. Code completion for functions, classes, chained classes, etc etc is where it's at. If you're not using a tool that uses code completion then you're a very silly person IMO

I agree. But Zend lacks support for some basic text ops

[stereofrog]

Yeah, textmate just found its way to the trash can.

Coda has built in FTP, SSH, even books..you can click a book for instant references to HTML, JS, CSS, and PHP...which is nice.

The power of Textmate is that you can extend it anytime using your own scripts. I haven't found any kind of macro or script facility in Coda, which makes it essentially useless to me.

[logic_earth]

I agree. But Zend lacks support for some basic text ops

Clearly thats because its not a text editor for text. It is an IDE dedicated to PHP. If you want more advance editor for basic text then get Microsoft Word.

[eightamrock]

If you want more advance editor for basic text then get Microsoft Word.

This article just popped in my head...

[UFTimmy]

I'll just go ahead and throw mine out there.. I use jEdit. I love it. I like the panes, I like the syntax highlighting, the folding, and all of the addons you can download for it (including FTP).

It wasn't the easiest editor to setup, but it's very lightweight for what it does.

[gRoberts]

as logic_earth, I use editplus. One of the first programs installed on any computer I use.

Its especially great for client side coding, as you can quickly switch between preview and code with ctrl+b.

I use PHP Designer often to check html code from other sources. If you think theres something wrong with your code, ie missing closing tags, you can select the opening tag and it will show you where it's being closed.

[ivanfx]

Great news

After 12 hours of trying, I compiled Notepad2 soruce

When I make some cool modifications I'll post it here

[Lemon Juice]

I use jEdit too, it takes some time to set it up but when you're finished it's very powerful. Great customizable syntax highlighting, multiple views, split panes, dockable toolbars, macros, multi-character set support, custom shortcuts, macros, incremental search bar (my favourite!), regular expression search/replace, built-in plugin manager with automatic download and update system, code folding, markers (marking selected lines as more visible to draw attention), multiple and rectangular selection, word-wrap (how come Eclipse doesn't have that?), paste history, unlimited undo/redo (the number is customized). But you need to find plugins for many tasks: ftp, realtime code completion, project management (including quick finding of classes and methods), code navigation, tabs for open buffers, multiple word highlighting, diffs, svn (haven't used that one yet), project search & replace, fast file open within project, and many others.

You only need to be careful when updating to a newer pre-release version (backup your old installation, but it's worth it) because sometimes an important feature you use can become broken and need to wait for another release with a fix. JEdit takes time to get used to but then it's very rewarding, I'm amazed I get so many features for free! Sometimes a minor bug can occur (like in any software) but I've never had a single case of data loss or corrupt files and the program seems to be very stable under windows XP.

If you want to dig deeper you can create your own macros in beanshell or customize highlighting to your needs - for example I made a simple modification in an xml file so that smarty template files show with smarty comments {* ... *} highlighted.

[Tipem]

skEdit (for mac only)

[simshaun]

I have tried Zend and a majority of well-known PHP editors (and textpads like Notepad++, PSPad, EditPlus, etc), and I have always come back to NuSphere PHPEd

http://www.nusphere.com

Its the best editor I've used thus far across many years of programming.

It's got decent support for debugging, code completion, built-in FTP, extensions, project management (PHPEd's project management earns 5 stars in my book), and much more.

Also, it is not slow like JAVA based editors such as Eclipse. I just about toss those out just because they can't keep up with my clicking around.

[Stormrider]

PHPEd is my favourite as well. It is pretty similar to Zend, but with a few more useful features, and runs much faster as well (Zend is Java, runs pretty slowly on my machine).

I use eclipse at work, and it is buggy as hell. I hate it.

[santouras]

eclipse is horrible imo. I weep a tear every night now that Zend has moved Studio to eclipse. I will not be upgrading....

I have to put in some props for Editplus as well. I think it's a fantastic tool and is what I still use for editing outside of projects. I think it's interesting people talking about ftp so much as well. I haven't used FTP regularly for ages now, I can't stand it anymore. WinSCP is such a fantastic tool if you can get SSH access to your server, and it's something I demand these days when working with external servers.

[logic_earth]

^ Or could use something like SftpDrive work directly on the server from Windows Explorer

[santouras]

one of the most handy things I use winscp for is to open up a putty session. Putty doesn't save passwords however winscp does. When you're in it you go ctrl+p and putty opens. So amazingly handy

Of course also transferring massive files is very handy when you know the connection will stay alive for days on end.

I will definitely give that a shot tho. A reservation I have about it is that I absolutely forbid any development work to be done on our servers. Small bits of debugging is fine, but no development should be done, and something as easy as that could cause some people to fall into habits I would rather they didn't

Just gave it a quick bash. Nice application. Couple of issues I can see with it:
1. no symlink ability
2. no chmod ability

I imagine it would be a great tool for when you're actually working off of a remote folder, but in the dev/live world I'd rather use an actual client that lets me compare files, run server commands and the like. As a tool for accessing a remote server through ssh as a network drive tho, completely awesome

[logic_earth]

Aye I understand completely about the hazards of developing on the live server. Thought it would be useful to those who might have a setup like mine.

I have a Linux server running in VMware for developing/practicing/learning Ruby. Its a real pain to send my source files to the server everytime just to test so instead use a network drive setup using sftpdrive and work directly on the server, then just an ALT+TAB away I have PuTTY with an open shell.

I am aware I could have had installed Ruby on Windows but it works much better on Linux and having it completely isolated from my main system means I don't have to worry about breaking it from some rouge/bad code I might write. Oh and can mess with different instalation options.

[WhaLberg]

PHP Designer is cool.