I tried an evaluation version of PHPEd recently (maybe 3.3?) and thought it was really great. But I had a problem that I couldn't overcome. I have some php scripts that do not have the .php extension (handled by AddType in .htaccess) which I cannot rename due to external factors. The scripts all run without any problem. However when I tried to run the same set of scripts through PHPEd it could not run the php scripts that did not have a .php extension, and instead displayed the contents of the script file (oddly not all the contents). I assumed it was running the internal web server instead of Apache, so tried to set it up to use the external web server, but still could not make it work. At the time I fiddled around with .htaccess to see if it was actually using it, and it seemed that changes I made in .htaccess were being reflected in PHPEd. I then renamed the index.php to index.1 (which works in this particular setup) and tried to debug index.1, and PHPEd displayed an error saying it could only run php scripts (index.1 is a php script). So my question is: before I make up my mind whether to purchase PHPEd I need to know if there is a way to run and debug php scripts that do not have the .php extension? I cannot change the live runtime environment so other solutions involving conf or ini files etc won't work.

if you need to use Apache specifics in your php development, please go ahead and use it. PhpED supports working with Apache pretty well. Read FAQ on how to set project settings up.

This doesn't explain how to get PHPEd to recognise that the file is a php file. I was getting a message saying that PHPed can only debug php files. If I remember correctly the editor did not even show the run button if I loaded a php file that did not have the .php extension. How do I get PHPEd to recognise and run/debug php files that do not have the .php extension?

Good question. I'm going to answer in the FAQ area. See it there:
howto-debug-php-files-that-don-t-have-php-extension-t1059.html#3960

Thank you - that fully answers my question. Now I'm really impressed with PHPEd and your smart debugger.