Nice product. Has come a long way since my last evaluation and I now use it. Since I'm new to PHPED, I may not of figured everything out yet, but intuitively speaking, I could not find the following features:

1. A way to turn off the COM listenr object from auto-launching.
Sometimes this takes 30 seconds or more to load at startup and while loading, the program is frozen so I can't do anything. Should be a configuration that allows this to launch the first time you click the 'Run', 'Debug', etc or to have it auto-launch at startup. I would assume there is not much overhead to this COM object in memory, but if there is, this is another reason. Sometimes it's nice just to code...

2. Custom tag completion.
Homesite offers a dialog box where I can define a tag (or anything actually), with a beginning (e.g. <b>), and an end (e.g. </b>). Then whenever I type the beginning, the end automatically completes and my cursor is placed between them. I know there is a 'shortcuts' capability, but would like to see an automatic feature (no special keys to press first).

3. Custom toolbar icons/events.
Homesite also offers a way to assign shortcuts, tag creation (see #2), commands, even launch applications, from toolbars. It allows you to assign the action to the button and to assign an icon (bitmap image). This is very helpful for creating custom shop activities.

4. Sorting class methods.
For the life of me, I could not figure out how to sort the methods within a class in the class explorer view. When you right click on a class and select sort, it sorts the "classes" but not methods within the classes. Currently it looks like PHPEd just brings the class methods into the class explorer in the order they are entered in the class. With many methods to a class, it sometimes becomes difficult to find a method. Being able to sort by 'name' for example, would perhaps make it some what easier.

5. Go to method.
Right clicking on a class method in the class explorer offers a 'Go to method' choice which seems a bit useless since you can double click on the method and go to it. However, it would be nice if you could highlight a method within your code and right click to select a 'Go to method' -- very very helpful!

6. 'Find' looping.
When doing a 'Find', you have a choice of 'forward' or 'backward'. It would be nice to just allow looping. In other words, 'Find' will automatically search from where the cursor is to the end of the document and back around to where it started. It kind of does this now, but not always on the first try which leaves me to wonder whether all 'Finds' or 'Replaces' were successful.

6a. 'Replace' success message/count.
Would be nice when doing a find and replace that when complete a message appears to let me know how many were found and replaced. Currently the find and replace simply runs and then you're back in the program with no indication of whether or not it actually found and replaced anything. A simple message like 'Replaced 10 items successfully" would be very helpful.

7. Color syntax on user functions and methods.
You can colorize PHP functions and methods, however user functions and methods are treated as any other user text (code). Since code insight recognizes the functions and methods, it would be nice if they could be colorize separately from other text.

8. Code insight across project.
Code insight seems to only work on the currently open file (functions or methods within the currently open/active file). Would be more beneficial if code insight worked across all files/classes in a project. Or, even better, to allow to define a set of files to include in code insight for a specific project.

9. Including hidden directories (above the document root)
Including hidden directories (above the document root) is kind of funky to configure. Make this easier and more intuitive. There are lots of applications that take advantage of storing critical files outside the document root.

10. Filter to 'hide' folders or files from a project view.
When configuring a project to point to a specific directory, many times there are directories (and files), which are not part of the project. For example, when dealing with directories outside of the document root, you end up seeing all directories for the web server that are not part of the application project. Would be nice to be able to right click on the unneeded folders and say 'hide from view'. You could always then right click on the top most folder to 'unhide hidden folders'. This is also the case for files. There are many files which contain the same extension as ones you want to work with in the project, so using the simple 'hide files of extension' won't work. Instead, the same feature as the folders (right click on the file and select 'hide file from view') would be nice. These two features would make many a huge project much more readable and manageable and also protect from inadvertent changes to code you don't want to be touching.

---- Additional Very Powerful Nice To Haves ------

1. Ability to load multiple versions of PHP into local web server configuration and then choose the version to run against on-the-fly. This would be extremely helpful when debugging code across multiple versions quickly.

I completely agree with all your suggestions but would take your number 10 even further: It would be very cool if it would even skip the folder scanning of those "ignored" folders when loading, hence a few thousand files big project would load a lot faster.

FYI I think I read somewhere on the site that your suggestion in point 8 is being done already for a future version, can't seem to remember where.

if it takes 30+ seconds, please check what's up with both COM layer and sockets layer. Probably local firewall is involved or a kind of antiviral software. Try to turn them off one by one to check out.

take a look at tools->settings->Reserved Words tab, select HTML language and turn Auto Close on for all tags you want.

good.

If you want them to be sorter alphabetically, just right click on the tree and check sort by name.

good.

good.

good.

It would be overkilling. Code analyzing runs in background and is a very slow process while drawing the editor content should be as fast as possible. It can't wait for the analyzer to finish up. That's a kind of a technical problem.

Right click on the code explorer and select Project Tree.
It will bring up all the files in your project.
If you mean code completion to show classes in your project, it works accross the project if code analyzer is able to understand your INCLUDE() and REQUIRE() statements, e.g. when it able to find the target file. Then it takes it content into consideration when builds up code completion list.

Any problems with set up mapping in the project settings ?

See Project Properties->Hide files (it's on the bottom).

you can do it right now if you assign different file extensions to be run on different php versions (e.g. .php4 for php 4.x and .php5 for php 5.x)

if it takes 30+ seconds, please check what's up with both COM layer and sockets layer. Probably local firewall is involved or a kind of antiviral software. Try to turn them off one by one to check out

You're probably right about the system causing the problem, but... would be nice to have the option rather than trouble shoot. Virus protection is always on - won't turn it off in this day and age, too risky.


take a look at tools->settings->Reserved Words tab, select HTML language and turn Auto Close on for all tags you want

Good.


If you want them to be sorter alphabetically, just right click on the tree and check sort by name
Thought I did that and just got sorted classes not the methods within the class. I'll try again...


It would be overkilling...

Fair enough.


Right click on the code explorer and select Project Tree
I'll try it. INCLUDE/REQUIRE many times are coded dynamically so code explorer probably wouldn't figure that out. Not sure the difficulty, but being able to recognize an instance variable (e.g. $myinstance = new MyClass() ) and then give me insight when I use the variable (e.g. $myinstance->method([code insight displays])... ). Other is calling statically which the code explorer should be able to figure out (e.g. MyClass::mymethod([code insight displays])... ). The catch to all of this is the file is somewhere in my project but not necessarily in an INCLUDE OR REQUIRE


Any problems with set up mapping in the project settings ?
I needed the forum to show me how to do it. No problems once I set it up, just a bit confusing in setting up. Essentially, I'm lazy. I guess I was just asking for a button or 'browse...' to directory capability that did all the mapping automatically since I would believe there is a lot of projects that utilize above document root setups.

As a side note, I have had trouble running debugger using the local server when I have files outside the document root. Probably a setup failure on my part, but... I have a single file in the public web path that then does a whole lot of require_once calls to files outside the document root. Works fine in run mode, but when I debug, it fails to find the first file being accessed outside the root. Seems to be a mapping problem, again, probably on my part, but these are things I think could be figured out by PHPED on the fly and performs the mapping automatically. Debug works fine when I call it via the URL (DBGSESSID...).


See Project Properties->Hide files (it's on the bottom).
Good, I'll look. Thought I tried everything though. But will look again.


you can do it right now if you assign different file extensions to be run on different php versions
I know but... Again I'm lazy. In most cases, if you try hard enough there is always a way. I was thinking more like I download the windows binary for a certain version, extract it as is into a special folder in the Nusphere folder on my drive and within PHPED, it recognizes the version and allows me to select it on-the-fly during debug or profile, etc. (I may have to do some setup but little I hope)...

Thanks. Great product and getting better all the time...
-Steve

actually forum did the best...
http://forum.nusphere.com/howto-setup-project-with-scripts-located-out-of-web-tree-t646.html

People!
I'm using to get my functions highlighted and it's very easy to see what's going on even if there are 1000+ lines of code.

Or maybe I've got you wrong?

as far as I understood, the main question was if it's possible to highlight functions (user function) written in php that you just typed in the editor. For example after you tryped function myfunc() { blah blah blah, all occurences of myfunc would become highlighted since that.

If by 'highlighted' you mean colored to a preference of mine, then yes you understood the question right.

BTW...


Yes, I know, I used it. I was suggesting making it more wizard-like, so all we needed to do was identify the document root and then identify any directory above the root, and the editor maps accordingly. As mentioned numerous times, I'm lazy...


This did not work for me. It only sorts the classes in the file, not the methods in the classes. I need the methods sorted in alphabetical order -- desparately (using Win98). With 25 or more methods in a class, it gets very difficult to find a method when not in order by name. It also helps if using common syntax (e.g. getFunc(), setFunc()), to keep them all together.


Great. One added suggestion. Currently, can only select one tag at a time to turn on or off autoclose. Would be nice to either have a 'turn all on by default', 'turn all off by default', and ideally, multiple select to the above.


I think we're not thinking the same thing. I want the code explorer to only show me the class I'm working with (single file). However, when typing code, it would be nice if the code-insight functionality provided me insight into other classes in the project when I used those classes. These may or may not be included within the active class file. For example, I use a "startup" file that performs all the includes/requires upfront since I know they all be used. The class methods then can call methods from other classes without having to worry about including. However, the code-insight does not "see" these classes (probably because the include/require does not exist).

Long story short, would be nice if the editor could recognize a different class/method. Since I can see all kinds of conflicts with duplicate classes/methods (during development), perhaps you do it on only files "open" in the editor and if conflicts, either choose first found or pop up the code-insight window stating the conflict. I wish alot I know.


See Project Properties->Hide files (it's on the bottom).
Not what I need. There a lots of '.php' files I do not wish to have in the project, however if I simply turn on the filter '*.php', I hide the ones I DO need to work on. If I have to type in every single file I want to hide, well, that's insane, at least for projects the size I'm working on.
My suggestion was to have a way to simply 'hide' a file or folder (and all its subitems), by right clicking on the item and selecting 'hide'. If in your code you actually applied the filter of every single name, well, that's fine with me, I just don't want to have to type in individually myself.