PHP Development Environment

Visual Basic for PHP? Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but as far as I know, there is no such thing. Why would you want this?

If you're looking for a PHP editor (color coded tags, etc), I would suggest PHP Designer (it's what I use). Just Google it, and you'll find it.

If that's not what you're looking for, is it more of a planning/mapping tool you're looking for?

Are you trying to run PHP on your computer so you can test it out? If so AppServ is perfect http://www.appservnetwork.com/

There is such a thing as PHP-GTK, so you could conceivably mimic the Visual Basic environment if you really wanted. I don't see PHP-GTK being a good idea anyway, let alone cloning VB for PHP. (You can use Glade with PHP-GTK, so...)

Zend Studio is probably the most comprehensive IDE specific to PHP that I've seen. There are several other apps like Dev PHP (free), phplus (free), PhpEd, PHP Designer, PHPEdit, etc, which are also specific to PHP but aren't worth the effort, imo.

The trouble with them is that they are specific to PHP. I'd encourage you to pick a multi-lingual editor/environment instead. The reason is that to be efficient and productive, you'll learn how to exploit features of the editor. If/when you decide to use a new language, you'll be stuck relearning ways to do the same functions in another tailor-made editor.

So I suggest you look at apps such as Eclipse (PHPEclipse), Emacs (php-mode), SciTE, and BBEdit. They each have modes for editing PHP, and all kinds of other features not specific to it.

My personal preference is Zend Studio, but it isn't free.

As for plain tet editors, I like UltraEdit (UltraEdit.com), as it has syntax highlighting for many languages and lot so other features for code writers.

-Greg

I actually just installed Notepad++, which does pretty much any format you'll use online plus C and some others, and started using it.

Just another option. Oh, and it's free.

Notepad++ is a very good program, but I think it exemplifies the fuzzy boundary between "editor" and "environment".

For me, an IDE (non-visual) also has hooks to external programs like compilers and debuggers, inside the program. And importantly, it should have some form of scripting so that it can be extended to suit various contexts like new languages, with sub-programs or meta-programs. It should link to documentation and so forth.

Notepad++ goes some way in this regard but not quite enough, imo. It can be a great tool depending on how you use it, and your skill level, though.

PS: Greg, edited your post to fix the URL. The inline edit interface doesn't have a "reason for edit" field.

Hey, got PHPEclipse working. Wow! Eclipse is one heck of an environment! Wow, runtime debugging!!! It's like the holy grail, thanks Abhi!
What's your current favourite IDE then Abhi? Can Emacs and SciTE do what Eclipse can?

I've been using Midnight Commander (for quick remote hacks) and Bluefish/Vi for everything else, but these definately fall into the realms of "editor."

benf, am in agreement with Abhi here, you should check out the editors he suggested, especially Eclipse.

The only thing I had problems with was finding the documentation for the PHPEclipse plug-in, this is available at: http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_PHPEclipse.

Another thing to consider is that Eclipse is seperate to PHPEclipse, the latter being a plug-in for the former. You have to download Eclipse first here: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ then follow the instructions in the documentation I linked to earlier.

Damn Abhi, you know your stuff.

Agreed Abhi, have been using Eclipse for a bit and am finding it's maxing out my new P4 laptop, even when not doing anything. I have no idea what it's up to!

Anyway, think I'll go down the Vim route. Thanks for the link!

I've used Scintilla and SciTE for quite awhile now on Windows-based computers. I love it, although it takes a bit of setup initially to get it exactly how I wanted it. The advantage, however, is that I was able to customize it to exactly the coloring coding and such that I wanted.