Yea the coloring isn't the greatest but it gets the job done and you can't messit up easily and not as many buggs b/c it is simple Not that I am computer illiterate it is just that I am old fashion and like stuff that does it's job without a hassle. 
Editor used for PHP
I use Dreamweaver MX on Mac (at work) and WinXP (at home).
It does code completion for PHP and color-syntaxing.
I code valid XHTML 1.0 on it all the time, straight out of the box.
I used to use Homesite (on PC, on Mac DW4 but it sucks for pure coding), but now I find that DreamweaverMX beats the pants off Homesite. It can do everything Homesite could and more, IMHO.
It is a resource hog, like all the Macromedia MX products,
but so is Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop
and since i rarely have anything else open but a couple of browsers when coding it doesn't much bother me
Yea that is cool but code completion may save on errors but it gets anoying at times to believe me I program in VB 6.0 Also a big problem with those editors is that they cost money I love open source software and freeware.
Currently I'm using Homesite on Win2K professional. I've used Notepad, VI, UltraEdit, TextPad, and Dreamweaver in the past. I have to say that TextPad is a sentimental favorite, but I had to give it up for something more robust.
Homesite's extended search and replace is great in v5.0 (not so reliable in previous versions). The syntax highlighting is good, but it's a shame you can't define custom templates/rules.
I'll have to check out some of the freeware editors mentioned here, like ConTEXT, PHPEdit, and SourceEdit. PHPEd sounds more and more attractive in spite of the price tag. I'm surprised not to see a single endorsement of Zend Studio though. Maybe I won't have to spend time checking it out yet...
Hum, looks like I'm one of the few that use Notepad for my PHP editing. Its got a small memory footprint, and on XP works like wordpad on other 9x os'. I find editors take up my entire screen with all sorts of shit I don't need. I'm never doing only one thing at a time, so notepad works great with 4 or 5 open, all viewable at once :p
But, I do admit sometimes I use WordPad, it replaces alot faster and loads large scripts way faster than notepad. However when pasting code from other sources it takes the formatting with it, so its kinda a nusance.
If I'm on nix I use pico shrug
u don't use regexp search and replace? :eek:
recently my system crashed, I dropped a pen in the open case and it went kaput. It's not funny guys....
Anyway, I went back to an old system lying around, it's running windows XP pro and had no editor installed. I had the choice of going with homesite, Ultraedit and various others recommended on this post. Quite a helpful post honestly as I tried a lot of the editors, so thx all.
At the end of the day however, HomeSite (4.5.2) was the pick of the litter. I'll probably try PHPEd before moving back to my original desktop, see how it runs on wintendo. It was quite slick on linux.
-m.
you did what?
snarfle
rofl
dropped a pen in the open case
LAMO no that is funny droping a pen in an open computer case.
That Cracks me up. 
j/k
hmmmm LAMO as in LMAO? 
Pencil dropping is the first cause for early failure along with running in server room and tripping on a wire (preferebly the main server's power supply) and the ever so funny coffee mug poored on CPU (works with coffee or Montain dew cf.:http://www.phpbuilder.com/board/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10212506)
I confess that I have to change my keyboard every now and then (6 month is my max record) because i do drop a lo of things in the keyboard (clipping devices, ashes from my cigars, stapples and my all time favorite, the coffee mug or the rum glass).
Keith Edmunds maintains a pretty exhaustive list of PHP-friendly editors at:
True, I've spilt all kinds of stuff on my keyboard too -- however, it's been holding up since 96.. no jokes. Here is the real shocker though -- it's a Packard bell keyboard. :eek:
The open case thing does deserve a laugh I suppose, though I personally found it quite annoying.
Hmm, anyone here been able to run HomeSite via wine?
I once spilled coke all over my keyboard. It was a real problem, because of the stickiness. I pressed enter once, and I end up 20 lines down. Makes for buggy programming.
My dad suggested soaking in water.
It would have worked, I suppose (he's an EE), but I didn't do it.
I've never actually had a huge amount of liquid pour into my keyboard, but I've had little drops of water and pop. But, my keyboard is a food/hair trap.
The base of every key is dirty, and looking between the keys you can see hair.. and endless dirt and crumbs. My old keyboard, I could take off the keys and clean them but not this one (I broke my old one cause when plugging it in, half asleep, I bent all the pins and they fell out.. cheap thing -wireless for me now.)
/me feels nauseous :eek:
gar:eek:
I don't know how people can stand java based text editors... I find them to be sluggish.
I used Jext for awhile, I really really like it's highlighting and it's concept of a word.
But the autocomplete stuff bothered me too much, it wasnt' very accurate and it would complete things that I didn't want completed. I even tried turning it off, but it did it anyway.
Also, you could only view one document at a time. You couldn't arrange two mini-windows side by side. Oh, and line numbering was a pain... it has a "gutter" on the left where the line numbers are, and you have to pull it out every single time.
Jedit doesn't appear to me much different, but I haven't used it very much. I did play enough to realize it has the same sluggishness Jext had.
I'm nearing the end of my trial with UltraEdit, and I think I'm going to purcahse it. The only things I don't like so far is the LF CR and CR/LF switching from DOS to UNIX doesn't seem to work, it doesn't support very good project collections (like in an explorer-type view), and the highlighting doesn't span multiple lines. It starts over at a new line, making it more difficult to spot mismatches quotes. It has a nifty hex edit mode.
I've tried Programmer's notepad, but it is kind of buggy. It had no auto-complete. The syntax highlighting was only OK. It would span over multiple lines (making it easy to see missing " mistakes), but it didn't have enough categories of different types of things. I didn't like it's concept of a word. Programmer's notepad also had a hex edit mode, which was cool.
There's one that looks a lot like VC++ editor called AnyEdit Professional, but it won't work for me :-( it crashes. It's a known problem that I the creator can't seem to fix.
It would be cool if there was a PHP higlighting module for VC++.
Xphp has Apache and PHP bundled into it, so you can debug on the fly. This seems nice, but it necessitates all dependencies being the same on your machine and your server. However, it doesn't have some interesting features: it has buttons along the top for common functions. Press the button, and the function call is inserted into your text for you. However, I already installed Apache and stuff on my local machine, I dont' want it twice. (The splash screen looks cool though).
Hey! And what's about FAR+Colorer??? Check http://rarsoft.com. FAR is on the main download page, and Colorer/ColorerLib is on the plugring page. These are the BEST tools. Really. I'm using them about six years for all kind of coding (PHP/C/Perl/...)!