Author: MPSoftware
Title: phpDesigner 2008
Price: €39 EUR approx. $61 USD
(€48.75 EUR incl. VAT*)
Free Demo: Yes
Product Rating: 5/5
Packaging Rating: n/a (Download)
Description:
phpDesigner 2008 is one heck of an IDE if you develop in php. It is jam packed full of featured. It has what you would expect in any decent IDE. Debugger, breakpoints, call stack, code libraries etc. It has support for

• subversion(my new obsession).
• phpDocumentor (though not perfect I was glad to see this)
• code beautifier
• smarty
• PHP5.2.x OOP(this makes OOP design NICE)
• the list goes on. If you use DreamWeaver now, you are missing out.

Minimum Requirements:

• Microsoft Windows® XP/XP2/Vista
• Pentium 300 MHz+
• 256MB RAM or higher
• 100MB Hard Disk Space (full installation)
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 4+

Lead In:
I have recently accepted a new job for the university of Maryland medical center. I will of course be developing their web applications. I was advised that any software I wanted withing reason let them know. Having used phpDesigner 2007, I opted to get them to pick up phpDesigner 2008. I am glad I did.


Review:
If you hang around the web forum a bit, you will notice I am into PHP OOP or POOP. lol This IDE is one of the best I have found for this type of development. I do not like "Eclipse" as you have too much work setting it up. I want my IDE to just work. I will do my work in my IDE not to it.

I was impressed with the features this tool has. I am still learning some. One of the first things I fell in love with was the ability to create as many code templates for each language that I want. I have utilized this to the max. Also the subversion integration is seamless. The ability to see my comments in


The Good:

• beautiful customizable interface
• Endless features list
• Great OOP support
• supports many languages besides php
• customizable syntax highlighting
• phpDocumentor support/integration
• smarty support/integration
• much much much more... I am lazy

The Bad:

• Html auto complete tags are annoying as it isn't my style. but I can deal.
• phpDocumentor support has some issues with window style directories(spaces)
• lack of documentation on how to do some things.

Final Thoughts:
Given all of the bad, I still choose this over DreamWeaver and Zend. The PHP support is fantastic. The documentation is a breeze. I would recomend this to anyone serious about php Design work.

Updated your posting; you know, unless you started designing your own software, you're not the author lol...

ahhh, my bad, I thought it was author of the review. I guess they could look left for that though.

Do you like the predefined post templates? I got really bored one night and decided to code lol

I did not see a template. I just copied a post I saw in here and figured that was the format.