Zend Studio 5 Rocks my world - how about yours?

simon622

Guys & Gals,

Just a quickie to see if anyone else is on the beta testing program for zend studio. I received the beta 5 version yestreday - and it rocks my world.

Couple of great features - code folding (which is just an added extra).

But my favourite has to be the project inspector - that looks at all your files in your project - and adds class definitions - types etc. etc. all in one place for the whole of your project - so its now sooo easy to manage coding in large projects. Its as nice to use now as eclipse is in the java world. A much more mature IDE than a year or so ago.

This is a gem - i urge you all to take the beta cut for a spin. - and stick your comments here.

piersk

Yeah, I'm gonna be downloading it tonight. I'll let you know then

LoganK

It definitely seems interesting, but my past experiences with Zend Studio have led me to be very wary when trying out new IDEs. Dreamweaver works fine for me (even though it's not PHP-centric) - I've tried all the other PHP-centric IDEs but nothing seems to work for me. With Zend Studio, in particular, the first time I opened it up it had a very cluttered interface; in Dreamweaver it was very clean. That said a lot about the program right there. Plus I never got the PHP web version of Studio to work right (something about configuring it with the PHP compression thing, or whatever it is that obfuscates PHP code).

I've still got mixed thoughts about the whole thing. For example, sometimes I just wanna edit one file very quickly - how long does it take Zend Studio to startup? And does it have other useful features, like: an integrated PHP manual; a way to link to the PHP interpreter (php.exe) for debugging and preview purposes (PHP Designer 2005 implements this somewhat); or a localhost preview in-program? They're all features I would love if someone were to just implement them correctly.

Allright, my post is over. Let me know your experiences; I may give it another try if others seem satisfied enough with it.

And simon - yes, I'm on the beta test list for Zend.

simon622

Hey Logan,

I used to use Dreamweaver MX studio - but it was too design-"Y" for my liking - GUI editors etc.

From a purely PHP perspective I found Zend Studio does everything I need. Mounting FTP sites, including them in projects, inspecting all php files into the project. I run remotely all the time - so I use the remote degbugging with the Server and its just soo sweet.

It has code completion and incluides the PHP manual (if you want it to) which then given you all the function definitions real-time as you type.

I understand what you mean about it being slow on startup - im running on XP pro - with 256mb of 1gb RAM assigned to my JVM - this is more than enough - it flies when its open - i think its just the overhead of using microsoft as an OS running a JVM - (Im sure theyve added some slowdown somewhere - Oops - that's slanderous) when I run it on a linux install - it flies.

This I guess is very much personal prefernce - but Vs older incarnations of the same product it has come along way - and beats the pants off phpEdit .

(oww.. also has a great webservices modules that will create you WSDLs for you ).!!

Never tried PHP Designer 2005 - my have to give it a spin!

Any one else with any input?

LoganK

simon622 wrote:
I run remotely all the time - so I use the remote degbugging with the Server and its just soo sweet.

That's what I'm worried about - I do all of my debugging and initial development on my localhost, so I need whatever product I use to have support for the localhost.

simon622 wrote:
(oww.. also has a great webservices modules that will create you WSDLs for you ).!!

Never tried PHP Designer 2005 - my have to give it a spin!

What do you mean by the webservice modules?

And PHP Designer 2005 was good - I enjoyed it, but it had some bugs (for example, it would open the PHP page via a built-in IE component [I'm not even going to mention security], but it called it like this: "C:\Apache\Htdocs\page.php", rather than "http://localhost/page.php").

How big is the installation? Until this Friday (when I make a backup of My Documents), I've only got 2.2 gigabytes of free space left. Yeah I know - how could I fill up a 60 GB hard drive? It turns out I've got 18.7 gigabytes of My Documents, dating all the way back to 1997...enough about me though 😃

pohopo

I just switched to PHP Eclipse a few weeks back and I have to say it is a pretty nice platform. The best part is it is free. And I am one of those that is willing to spend money on a product if it will reduce time to develop. Time is money for me.