After using PhpEd for a few years, there are a few things I'd love to see implemented.

1. This one has been asked for so many times on here I'm amazed it hasn't happened yet! In Eclipse, I can press Ctrl-Shift-R (Open/Find Resource) and a box pops up with a search field and a results area. I can type anything, and the list will be filtered down immediately to matching files and their locations, so I can just pick the one I need and have it open. PhpEd 7 was almost useless in this respect (You would start typing and the editor would hang while it did the search). PhpEd 8 appears to be a lot better in this respect (no hanging / results are instant from what I've tried so far, presumably the names are now finally indexed in some way!), but I still have to jump from result to result around the workspace using my mouse on the button (perhaps there is a shortcut - I don't know) - there is nowhere I can see all the results at once and choose from a list or anything like that. So, improvements that could be made are: Keyboard shortcut to put cursor in search box, Results list filters down to only show relevant files as you type so I can just pick from the list. A separate popup window for this functionality would probably be needed so the list can filter down without disturbing your regular workflow, but it is a HUGE time saver in Eclipse, I don't understand why PhpEd is so far behind here!

2. There doesn't seem to be a way to collapse any tree views. For example, in the Workspace, if I have loads of directories and projects expanded for whatever task I'm working on, and I come to a new task, I have to set there and press all the minus buttons to collapse the tree again so I can start fresh. Why is there no 'Collapse All' function or button available? This is the most basic of things for a tree view, it's infuriating having to do it manually all the time! This is also infuriating after doing a find (see point 1), which opens up your whole workspace into different levels depending on where the found files are.

3. STILL no Subversion integration? Does anyone use CVS any more? Surely this is a really obvious feature to include! Also perhaps integration with the DVCS systems like Git, Mercurial etc. Everywhere I've worked Subversion has been used, it's almost industry standard - surely integrating it better than through the shell menu (which is just a few too many clicks away) can't be that difficult?

4. The 'Find Usage' feature in v7 was pretty useful sometimes, although it's a bit dumb really. All it does is essentially a search for an identifier - not very intelligent at all! Given that the code complete and ctrl-clicking on things seems to be really clever in the way it works out what you want, why is this feature so half-baked? Anyone can open a find dialog and put a class or variable name in - that's not a feature, it's just an extra unnecessary way to get to the find box. It has limitations when used in this way, and sometimes returns too many results just because the same name is being used in a different file or something, even though it would be easy to see that it's not the same variable being referred to.

All in all though, it's a great product, and inclusion of the above features would probably make me continue paying for the pro version & support - it's just things like this which I miss from other IDEs.

The file search hasn't in fact changed in v8, I was still interrupted half way through typing so it could search for the filenames

#2 seems to have some kind of effort to do this.. seems in version 8 if you collapse the project tree, it'll auto-collapse all child branches too.

Maybe not the most elegant, and definitely not the most obvious.. but a method nonetheless.. at least should save you a few extra hairs for a while =)



Cheers..

Ian

Ah yes, that's an improvement at least. A 'collapse all' button available to be placed on the toolbar in the workspace would be the best though!

although Collapse All as well Expand All are here from the very beginning (* and / respectively), I'd recommend you to try Worksets (see Window->Workset). This feature is for those developers who switch from one task to another in their work and need a smooth way to return back -- this is what Worksets is for.


is there anything wrong with integration level achieved with installed Tortoise SVN? You get all the statuses shown in Workspace and you can run SVN commands right in the Workspace popup.



Huh? If you think that this forum is the best arena for bashing the developers -- you're wrong. Try to make it clearer what you need and do this in a correct form, please. What you said about "find dialog" - is just an absurd and has absolutely no relation to reality. Find Usage is a kind of refactoring, it parses sources and searches for identifiers used in a specfic way. For example, if you have class with a name the same as, say, function name, Find Usage will find only what you are searching for, nothing else. How would Find dialog distinguish functions from classes if their names are the same? That's it.

That's not what I'm after. I just tried the shortcut keys you mentioned and they didn't do anything anyway - I just mean a button in the toolbar that can collapse all projects down to just the list. I don't want to have to fiddle around with worksets just so I can collapse everything back down! Surely this is really basic and easy to add a button to the available ones when customising the toolbar?


I've seen this solution in many places. I tried the integration and it didn't do a lot - didn't work at all. I've also read problems which can only be solved by having the 32 bit and 64 bit Tortoise SVN installed, only they don't let you install both at once now. It'd be nice to have something a bit more integrated that isn't just a repeat of the shell commands (which are an extra click away). This one isn't that important though.



I didn't bash any developers, and don't appreciate the words being put in my mouth!

It appears to me that all the 'Find Usage' does is a search for the identifier in question. I've just tried it on a private variable in a class, and it's found a load of variables with the same name in other classes which have nothing to do with this one! That clearly isn't the usage of the same thing.

Tortoise works fine with PhpEd, been using it for years with no issues at all, just Ctrl and right click to get right to the shell menu. Using Tortoise you can move things to the base menu, branch and merge for example.

Re 64/32Bit, you no longer need to install both versions independantly , in fact been that way for a while, since first 1.7 release, just install the 64bit version, includes required 32bit code.

/ and * collapse and expand the projects in my workspace but I do aggree, adding a button to the workspace toolbar would be handly for people that aren't aware of the feature, I've been using PhpEd since version 3 and only just found out about them lol

While the SVN issue can be treated as a higher-level feature that is not so critical, I'm amazed about the level of ignorance on #1 from the dev team and admins for so many years and versions - it being a very basic and critical feature that is missing. On the other hand I can't remember another IDE missing this feature and indeed, it is amongst the most wanted. As I mentioned in another thread, it turned most of my acquaintances away to other software.
Such huge timesavers (and small/easy to implement) are so slow to appear in phped..
Was hoping for some more in v7. Now v8 is out.. Still..

SVN support with TortoiseSVN and the Integration feature works very well.

I cannot possibly see how a "native" SVN integration in PhpED could ever reach the same rich functionality TortoiseSVN offers. So, unless they put tremendous and ongoing effort into it, a native SVN integration would always be inferior to the TortoiseSVN solution.

A possible compromise: pre-prepared SVN Integration menus, that can be easily switched on through the settings without the need to create them manually.

Just got them to work on mine - but they only work on one project at a time. Using worksets would also change the tabs I am looking at. It would be such a simple thing to include a button - it doesn't even have to be there by default, just able to be added to the workspace toolbar!

The most important thing for me though is the first feature I mentioned, which wasn't even replied to. It has been asked for so man times on here that I can see, I'm amazed it isn't being addressed!

I've never seen a need for a quick file filter, typically my projects are structured in a way where I don't feel that a file filter would help speed things up for me, If I want the risks model in my contract module it is only a couple of clicks away.

How do you typically use the feature in other IDEs, what does it speed up?

I'm a long time PhpEd user so maybe I've adjusted my workflow over the years.

The projects I work on at work are HUGE, and interlinked as well, so much that I've barely seen most of the system. It's fine for my home projects where I know exactly how they are structured, but even if I know exactly where something is in a work project, it's far quicker to press a keyboard shortcut, type a few characters and then use the arrows to select a file, than it would be to navigate around the workspace with a mouse.