Ive used Eclipse before but saw no benefit using an IDE for PHP.
For several years I used ConTEXT - a regular text editor that had only one PHP
feature: keyword color highlighting. I have since switched to PDT - a PHP
Development Tools framework for the Eclipse platform. Although there are a
few features I miss in ConTEXT, there are many other benefits of using this IDE
to write PHP code:
1. The class outline is extremely helpful in finding attributes and methods in
large projects with many classes.
2. The Intellisense-like help feature: when you type the name of a built in PHP
function (or properly documented custom method) it will give you a brief
description and list the variables (type, order, required or not)
3. The ability to refactor code saves a ton of time if you decide to change a
method's signature.
4. The snippet library is convenient
5. The built-in PHP documentation is nicer than constantly visiting PHP's
homepage.
There are other things I like but these are the main features that made me
switch and stay with the IDE.
Here's the URL if you are interested: http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/
some of the other features that i really enjoy with eclipse include:
1. support of multi langs - php, java, python, c/c++, ruby (which i use and
abuse)
2. fantastic team sync (cvs, svn, and others)
3. web dev tools (html, xml, css, js)
4. db tools
5. server management tools (sftp, ftp, console)
6. testing tools
7. integration for other applications via external run commands
8. sweet diff utils
-
ray
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