Choosing an editor/IDE for PHP development

For a few years I have been using UltraEdit which is a very good editor for any web development work with one exception that it has some limitations when it comes to team based projects. An IDE editor is ideal when working with team projects or when you need to manage a large potion of code.

Generally speaking an IDE consists of syntax highlighting, code completion, debugging tools, version control, project management and FTP uploading. Finding a editor with these requirements aren’t as easy as it should be. There are a large number of editors out there and most of them are on the simple side, in other words no IDE editor.

I have tried out 12 different editors, both commercial and free products, and have to say that the commercial editors have very little to offer compared to the freeware. The editors I have tested are as follows Eclipse, Aptana, NetBeans, PHPDesigner, PhpEdit, PHPEd, E-TextEditor, UEStudio, Geany, Zend Studio, Codelobster and Komodo Edit.

Many of these editors are good and if your demands aren’t too high you would most likely be more than happy any of them. If you need a pure IDE then the options are limited to Eclipse, Aptana, NetBeans and Zend Studio. And NetBeans is the only one that sticks out here because Aptana and Zend Studio are both based on Eclipse.

The Editors

PHPEdit and PHPEd feels pretty much the same thing to me when I tested them. They were both a bit slow and far from a clean and user-friendly interface. However these editors are heavily focused on PHP just like PHPDesigner. Out of these I would defintely choose PHPDesigner. It’s an advanced PHP editor with a decent interface and good customization options just like UltraEdit.

UEStudio is the advanced version of UltraEdit and have to say it was a big disappointment. It feels like all they did was added more features to the UltraEdit version and made it bloatware. They really should rethink what they really want UEStudio to be aimed for, especially since it’s not very cheap to buy.

E-TextEditor, Geany and Codelobster I barely remember which can’t be a good sign. They are very simple editors and personally I would pick UltraEdit or Notepad++ if I wanted a more simple editor. I haven’t tried Notepad++ recently but I believe it’s only for Windows which is out of the question. Cross-platform software is always best, if you have that option :)

Now back to the IDE editors I mentioned earlier. Eclipse has been the leading IDE editor for quite some time and has a big community if that’s important to you. I really have hard to see what got it so popular, unless you’re an Java developer then it’s possibly one of the best editors you can get and for free.

Eclipse is known to be slow and for me there was no exception, sadly. It’s complicated to get it installed and running compared to the alternatives. Zend Studio which uses Eclipse is even worse, I could barely use it because it was so slow. It does however have some powerful features that is hard to find elsewhere when it comes to PHP development and also appears to be the most expensive editor I have seen.

Aptana is based on Eclipse and I found it very easy to use and setup. But it was a bit buggy, Subversion had some strange behaviour and sometimes the application wasn’t responding. It’s as slow as Eclipse since it uses the same snail code.

Last but not least we have NetBeans and this IDE is very nice, great interface and very responsive. Also easy to install and remove plugins apart from Eclipse. I see it as the most promising editor for PHP development right now but it feels like it’s still in early stage. There are several features that I’m missing and find it complicated to upload to FTP. It also lacks customization options that many other editors has.

So what do I choose?

It’s definitely not easy to choose an editor that fits you and that you can use in all situations. I will most likely stick with UltraEdit for a bit longer and use a non-integrated Subversion control until I can find an editor that can fulfill my dreams :)

I will keep NetBeans and continue to play with it for now, besides a new version (v6.7) is coming out in a few months. I did try the beta but it was too buggy so I went back to v6.5 and it’s been very stable so far. I will also watch the progress of the Aptana development but I have a feeling NetBeans will be better unless a new editor comes out and beats them all.