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When i started to develop php, i mostly done my work within the usual notepad. Afterward i felt the need to have syntax highlighting so i switched to some free text editors which supports php. My first stable editor that i used for nearly 2 years was Zend Studio (Dreamweaver was also a choice but i had to dump it since the code completion is very basic).
Recently i switched to Netbeans 6.5 and yesterday to 6.7. I was amazed with its features and with the speed of development it offered. Here are the top reasons i choose Netbeans
1. Money
Netbeans for PHP is absolutely free. It has a vast helping community. This was one of the primary motives to choose Netbeans over any other IDE’s. You can download it and start developing without a need to pay for anything.
2. History keeping
One of the major features of Netbeans is the History keeping it has. Basically, you can edit today a file, edit it tommorow adding some changes, and then, after you find out your boss/client wants to revert back to the previous changes, you just have to open the history view and click on revert and it will automatically change the file back to your selected date. But wait, this is not all: you can also view what you have changed from a previous date until the present. You can see what lines (highlighted) have been changed and you can revert or fix that bug you didn’t know where it camed from
3. Javascript code completition
Another major feature of Netbeans is that it has an awsome code completition feature. But this is not limited to PHP and HTML (the basics as i might say, for any IDE to have) but it also includes Javascript libraries such as basic javascript code completition but also Jquery for instance. Nothing more cooler then to have all the functions of Jquery at your disposale without going googling.
4. Management of multiple projects at the same time
One more nice feature is that you can have as many projects in your project tree view as you want. You can do anything from this tree, from copy/paste to move, rename and delete files. Basically, when your developing, you won’t need that Explorer window open to navigate through your files to rename/delete one of them anymore.
5. Multiple windows
Another cool thing that Netbeans has is that you can develop 1+ scripts at the same time. Let say for instance that you want to develop an MVC application. You could have 3 windows, each with: the Model file , the View file and the Controller file, developing in each one at the same time. I know it sounds crazy but sometimes, its really awsome to have them all in the same place when you dont want to switch between windows just to find the name of that function…
6. Addons
Netbeans comes with a massive pack of addons (not that many for PHP though) that you can install and help you with your development. For instance, if you use CakePHP framework, you can create a new cake project with only 3-4 clicks. You can have a regular expressions addon or some WebServices addons or just a Smarty template creator.
7. Tweaks to improve performance
Some problems that the default Configuration of Netbeans is that, when editing large files (and i mean very very large) is that it freezes for about 1 second when editing anything (due to the fact that it scans the file all the time for you to have the latest function definitions and code completition available (variablesm functions etc). Firstly i said, what a shame i’ll switch back to my Zend since i cannot work like this. But wait, this is Netbeans, made by the Java team. After i googled abit i found that editing your C:Program FilesNetBeans 6.7 Betaetcnetbeans.conf with something like this code below, it will increase the speed of things by alot. (tweak it for your own preference but this configuration should do the trick):
# ${HOME} will be replaced by JVM user.home system property netbeans_default_userdir="${HOME}/.netbeans/6.7beta" # Options used by NetBeans launcher by default, can be overridden by explicit # command line switches: netbeans_default_options="-J-client -J-Xmx512m -J-Xverify:none -J-Xss2m -J-Xms100m -J-XX:PermSize=32m -J-XX:MaxPermSize=512m -J-Dnetbeans.logger.console=true -J-ea -J-Dapple.laf.useScreenMenuBar=true -J-Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true" # Note that a default -Xmx is selected for you automatically. # You can find this value in var/log/messages.log file in your userdir. # The automatically selected value can be overridden by specifying -J-Xmx here # or on the command line. # If you specify the heap size (-Xmx) explicitely, you may also want to enable # Concurrent Mark & Sweep garbage collector. In such case add the following # options to the netbeans_default_options: -J-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -J-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -J-XX:+CMSPermGenSweepingEnabled # (see http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/FaqGCPauses) # Default location of JDK, can be overridden by using --jdkhome <dir>: netbeans_jdkhome="C:Program FilesJavajdk1.6.0_12" # Additional module clusters, using ${path.separator} (';' on Windows or ':' on Unix): #netbeans_extraclusters="/absolute/path/to/cluster1:/absolute/path/to/cluster2" # If you have some problems with detect of proxy settings, you may want to enable # detect the proxy settings provided by JDK5 or higher. # In such case add -J-Djava.net.useSystemProxies=true to the netbeans_default_options.
Now go and download it and start writing awsome code!