Zend with eclipse design preview

2levelsabove

The design preview only works if a project is loaded ?

Not on each individual file as dreamweaver ?

Thanks

bpat1434

You can't create "individual" files in the new Zend Studio 🙁 The way 90% of the functionality works (code-hinting, auto-complete, etc.) only if you build the project (which seems to take a lot of time). So the design preview should only work if you've actually built the file/project.

It's an unfortunate circumstance for Zend, but it's somewhat better than 5.5.0....

2levelsabove

yeah it is pretty cool .

kardiostep

are there any reasonable competition programmes to Zend? Dreamweaver can't be a competition, it's not for coding..

bpat1434

Dreamweaver is very much competition for Zend. It may not be the best program to use; however, it does work extremely well for the novice programmer.

There is also Nusphere's PhpED which is very similar to Zend's Neon; however, it doesn't use Java as a base.

There's also Komodo, PHPDesigner and a few others. But here is a page which compares a few of them for you 🙂

kardiostep

great, thanks

NogDog

Not sure how it compares to the others, but there is also the open-source Eclipse PDT IDE.

PS: I didn't see that second link of Bpat's: it includes Eclipse along with several others.

bpat1434

The Eclipse PDT, in my eyes, doesn't really compare to Zend IDE 6 (Neon), Komodo IDE, NuSphere PhpED, PHPDesigner, etc. The main reason is because all of the latter are IDEs and the PDT is not, it's more of a syntax highlighter for an IDE (Eclipse). Now, Neon is based on Eclipse and uses the PDT base, but it extends it so much further it's not even funny.

NogDog

I just downloaded the free (and castrated) version of PHP Designer last night after reading that link, and find it to be pretty nice for what is there and with a better "feel" for my tastes than Eclipse. I might break down and buy the "professional" version at some point if it continues to grow on me. If I do, I'll be sure to post a review here at some point in time. 🙂