I've used Zend Studio for years it had the right amount of features and I eventually overlooked it's shortcomings. Last week they released Zend Studio for Eclipse which is too much of a departure from 5.5 for me and I can't justify spending 300$ for an incremental increase to 5.5.1 if it's going to just get dropped in favor of the ZSfE eventually.

I've tried several editors trying to find the right one for how I work:

- Windows compatible (check)
- inline syntax checking (check)
- syntax highlighting (check) (phpDesigner 2008 considers <? and php different syntax, the $ part of variables are considered reserved)
- Won't mangle ProggyClean TT font (check) (phpDesigner 2008 and PHP-Edit put in strange spaces)
- Project management without inserting files into my work directories (check)

However with PhpED being the most complete I have found a couple nagging short comings with it.

- Quickly run a tiny bit of self contained code
In Zend Studio if I wanted to test a small bit of self contained code I could click new file, paste the code in and then hit F5 to run it in the debugger. The script output would show up in the debugger window which was quickly closed by hitting ESC.
In PhpED I have to first save the file and then second the results are displayed in the SRV web server.
* I don't want to have to save a file to double check a small bit of code manipulating some array structure.
* Since I use a black background I don't want a bright flash of a white screen when the SRV web server shows me the script results.
Is there a way to allow me not to save files or more importantly to have the results of a script display in a debug window or default to the source view when run?

- Error Analysis underlines are cyan, light blue?, with no apparent way to change their color.
Not that I know of a way in Zend Studio to change the error analysis wavy line color but they were red and red screams 'error'.
In PhpEd these lines are cyan or some light blue color and I don't notice the lines as well as when they were red.
Is there any way to change the color of these lines?

Thanks

PhpED runs files with standalone webserver either SRV or something else like Apache or IIS according to your choise. This server of couse knows nothing about IDE and editor buffer in particular. It works with files. The IDE you referred to is using dummy.php approach. It always execute dummy.php and replaces its in-memory content with what you actually run. It seems that in this case you can run without saving only current file. Should you have any includes, you'd have to save them anyway.
We don't like this paradigm anyway. It's a kind of obfuscation/emulation while what we do is real run the same way as it would happen without the IDE at all so you will not wonder what happened when you move to your live server. BTW you can check auto-save option and IDE will save the files for you.

If you don't need the output rendered in browser, select CGI mode. In this case PhpED will run the files with php executable directly and the Output tab will not appear. Nevertheless if you run with debugger in this mode, it will show the script output stream in the debugger's output docked window.

Regarding cyan color of the wavy lines, it looks like an error. They should be red in case of errors and olive in case of warnings. Thanks for the report. We'll fix it.

Thanks for the reply dmitri!

Having to save the file is a minor issue and I'm sure I can get over that. After making my post I found the options to change the script run point and located the debug output window.

I'm happy to hear about the wavy lines, and kinda interested to see what it'll be like having yellow warning lines as well. Is there any data from my install maybe regarding my color scheme that I could send in to help in solving this bug?

thanks, I got that cyan easily.

dmitri,
phpEd could just silently save the snippet somewhere in /tmp and feed that file to the web server, then discard it.

Say you develop a php file that includes some other php files, also being edited in the IDE, and refers to multiple css and js files that are in the project and are also edited. I'm not sure how saving only current file in /tmp may help.

the topic starter clearly describes his usage scenario:

you can run _any_ file in the debugger and use Immediate window for "Quickly run a tiny bit of self contained code"

is there any link to a page explaining how to use this window? All I could do is to start debugger, and type in variables to see their values. How do I test my code snippets with that window?

you can type there any code fragments suitable for the eval() function. For example function calls including eval function itself, method calls, etc.

I can only say that I used Zend for 4 months, and got so tired of the various bugs on windows.

Slow opening of files if you had a disconnected network card. I had to wait 5 - 10 minutes before I could use Zend, if I tried to open a file disconnected from the network.

I never got the zend debugger to work. Not even with Zend support, and zend support is worth nothing. It takes them weeks to give you an autogenerated reply.

So after 4 months with Zend, I bought PHPed, and what a relive it was.
You may dislike minor functions in PHPed, but the rest of the product is superior to zend in almost any way.

So even though I wasted 300$ on zend, I have never regretted my move to PHPed.
And I have tried almost any other PHP EDI (free as well as commercial ones).

I think all in all I have wasted around 800$ on PHP editors. PHPed is the only one worth buying.

hgr,
thanks for your kind words.
I'd highly appreciate if you also share your experience on how you use the IDE. Do you run php scripts with SRV, Apache, or IIS? Do you profile your code? Do you do remote debugging? How your projects are structured on the disk? Please tell us more.