You may recall that I wrote about some of NuSphere’s products and how I used them to develop (secure) PHP desktop applications such as Keyword Permutator. Well, there’s currently a sale on PhpED, their PHP IDE, starting at just $79 for the standard version. Before I knew better, I developed all of my code using just UltraEdit. Whilst I still use UltraEdit for everything else, it doesn’t offer the powerful tool set that PhpED does for PHP development.
With PhpED, you get features such as:
- Debugger - follow your scripts step by step and see how every variable gets populated.
- Web server - run your PHP scripts in a local environment. I like using WAMP5 for local development as it comes with Apache, PHP and MySQL pre-packaged and ready out of the box.
- Code profiler - see just how performant your code is before you risk it on a production server or use it to find bottlenecks in your code.
- CVS client - a handy feature, if you don’t already have a preferred CVS client. I use Tortoise CVS quite happily to keep my source code safe.
- Built-in language reference manuals - no more scrambling around for the PHP or MySQL manuals.
- Built-in database client - much quicker than firing up PHPMyAdmin. My preferred tool is a free copy of Navicat I got from the cover of PC Plus magazine!
- Smarty support - Makes working with templates a nicer experience.
- All of the usual code formatting, syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding etc. that you can get with many other programmer’s editors and much more.
If you’re serious about your PHP and you haven’t yet tried an integrated development environment, I’d recommend at least trialling PhpED. If the sale finishes before you decide to buy then check out the built-in tips for a surprise discount! 
Technorati Tags: PhpED, web development, PHP, WAMP, NuSphere
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