I hope we aren't going to get another chest-pounding "real coders" type of argument going here. Homesite *IS* a text editor. It provides an amazing number of shortcuts to tasks, including mouse-based tasks, many of which I guarantee you I can get done faster with a mouse than anyone can typing. It also offers a lot of pseudo-time-saving features as well, for which one would be better of learning to do it manually. But it isn't a GUI in any real sense as, say, Dreamweaver is. TextPad is at least as much of a GUI as Homesite in that respect.
I use both of these great tools a lot... none of them are the stigmata of the under-developed programmer. People should use what they want, but don't dump on everyone who realizes that clicking a button or using a keyboard shortcut in something like Homesite or Textpad to create common HTML structures or PHP control structures is always going to be faster than typing them out by hand, no matter how craven a Notepad warrior one might be. Zend looks pretty good in terms of providing what I like in a development environment, particularly real debugging... unfortunately it was definitely not particularly stable when I last tried it in late December. Integrated debugging, syntax coloring, function reference, keyboard shortcuts-- these are all useful tools. TextPad has good PHP dictionaries, Homesite handles PHP well. Homesite is STILL the only editor I have found that enables an easy "preview through the server" mapping so that I can, with one touch toggle between my editing and the live code through my local development server, something that saves a lot of time vs jockeying between windows with other tools. Not all mouse use is just waving one's hands through the air, none of the programs mentioned are particularly mouse-centric. c -- Chris Lott http://www.chrislott.org/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
