This isn't about any specific tool, but I was wondering what other people used for free and/or pay-for tools to develop PHP code on?
I'm still pretty much new to the tools arena and am wide open to suggestions/advice/sources to check out.
Right now my two main tools for developing in PHP (HTML/CSS etc) are NotePad++ and NoteTab Pro. They each have free versions, but the paid versions are a lot more flexible. For me each has its own set of plusses - I'd love to find something better even if it involves a learning curve.
I tried NetBeans back on my XP machines but didn't really get along with it; it just didn't seem to fit my workflow at the time.
So any discussions of which are the better tools might be quite interesting.
I like Notepad++ because it's more automatic to see bracket pairs and does a good job of highlighting PHP-ese. For instance, leave off a closing paren, angle bracket, etc., and you start to see commands highlighted in your text, where there should be none.
But I like NoteTab Pro best because it allows me to create my own clip-libraries of commands, text, any repetitive typing to allow using them at a mouse-click rather than typing the whole thing in. I also downloaded two PHP clip libraries and a CSS 3 library with it, which have been life-savers for quick lookup of how to use most of the statements of PHP & related code. I think the max size of a clip is something ike 4,096 characters, a limit I've never come up against. NoteTab is a real timesaver for holding code snippets and the like.
So, whether it's an IDE or a text editor, I'd like to discuss it here and hopefully pick up some valuable tips.
Any takers?
Rivet`