HTML Editor Reviews | Reviews and Discussion of (X)HTML Coding Tools

Review: PHP Designer 2007 Professional

PHP Designer 2007, just released this week, is the newest iteration of MPSoftware’s PHP Designer series. Long touted as one of the best free PHP editors around, PHP Designer’s new version brings with it a new licensing structure: There is the free Personal version (which can’t be used for commercial work) and the more robust Professional version, which is now priced at €55/$69 USD. While PHP Designer 2007 Professional is primarily aimed at PHP programmers, the editor certainly holds its own in the HTML editor arena. Is it worth the new price? I guess that depends on the type of coding you do.

What I Like

• Intelligent Syntax Highlighter. While you are in a document that contains separate languages, placing your cursor in an HTML block, for example, highlights (i.e., colours) all the HTML in the file and greys out the other languages.
• To Do and Bug List Managers. You can have inline or general to do and bug lists for your documents and projects. Handy for reminders.
• PHP Debugger. Assuming you have PHP installed on your computer, you can test your scripts from within the editor. Errors show up in the editor, and you double-click on the error message to go right to the problem.
• Code hinting for HTML and PHP.
• Code completion for HTML.
• Bracket highlighting/matching.
• PHP Code Inspector. Shows you all your include files, variables, classes, and functions.

Gripes

• Code hinting for HTML requires you to first press ctrl + space.
• Code hinting, while using Intelligent Highlighter, brings up a list of ALL hints, regardless of the active language. In other words, the dropdown contains all HTML elements, HTML attributes, HTML events, PHP functions, user variables, and Smarty variables and functions instead of only HTML elements, for example.
• Code completion for HTML places your cursor after the closing tag, rather than between the opening and closing tags.
• There seems to be little CSS support beyond syntax highlighting.
• The beta version of PHP Designer supported “Multi” language highlighting, which has now been replaced by the Intelligent Highlighter. What this means is that your files can only be highlighted as one language at a time if you don’t want to use the Intelligent Highlighter.
• The code snippet and template functionality are pretty rudimentary.

Wishlist

• Column selection and editing.
• Better overall CSS support.
• Multi-language syntax highlighting apart from the Intelligent Highlighter.
• HTML/CSS code inspectors.
• Code collapse.
• Advanced code snippets.
• Improved HTML code completion (i.e., cursor placement.)

Overall

Because I spend most of my time coding HTML/CSS, I’m looking for an HTML/CSS editor with PHP functionality rather than a PHP editor with HTML/CSS functionality, and my score above reflects this. Other users may find the PHP focus more beneficial. PHP Designer 2007 Professional definitely seems like a solid piece of software. It has its quirks, but I find it pretty polished. If you write a lot of PHP and are looking for an affordable IDE, download the demo and give it a go.

15 Comments

1. Лазила в инете, и наткнулась на сайт приколов. Вы только посмотрите Приколы. До сих пор ржу не могу. :-D Извиняюсь что редактировала, не умела ссылку размещать.

   Comment by KisunyaIzLesu — November 4, 2011 @ 5:54 am

2. This design is incredible! You most certainly know how to keep a reader entertained. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Excellent job. I really loved what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool!

   Comment by modern warfare 3 — November 14, 2011 @ 12:20 am

3. Prbitfarpllew Get a Free iPhone niuhaSqwre

   Comment by Optipleviemes — November 15, 2011 @ 12:08 pm

4. А вы знали это? Российское кино снова набирает обороты мультфильмы торрент

   Comment by reversload — November 17, 2011 @ 5:03 pm

5. Hi, friend your is a Amazing page. I like a lot this, I have shared it on Facebook.

   Comment by Lifetime Video Profits — November 17, 2011 @ 5:55 pm

6. I was suggested this website by means of my cousin. I’m not sure whether or not this submit is written through him as no one else realize such particular about my trouble. You’re wonderful! Thank you!

   Comment by UGG Classic Argyle Knit 5879 — November 17, 2011 @ 11:14 pm

7. I’ve said that least 621133 times. The problem this like that is they are just too compilcated for the average bird, if you know what I mean

   Comment by a621133 — November 18, 2011 @ 8:27 pm

8. Fantastically revealing cheers, I presume your current visitors would possibly want a whole lot more articles of this nature preserve the great content.

   Comment by Replica Chanel Handbags — November 18, 2011 @ 9:53 pm

9. Hi buddy, your blog’s design is simple and clean and i like it. Your blog posts are superb. Please keep them coming. Greets!!!

   Comment by JonahSullivan — November 18, 2011 @ 11:37 pm

10. Thank you for showing your ideas. Being author, I’m often hunting for fresh and different ways to look at a issue. I actually find good creativity in doing so. Many thanks again

    Comment by Regina — November 18, 2011 @ 11:52 pm

11. I wanted to post a note in order to express gratitude to you for the awesome tips and tricks you are giving at this website. My particularly long internet research has finally been paid with sensible concept to talk about with my colleagues. I would say that many of us readers actually are very much blessed to live in a fantastic place with many wonderful people with very helpful tricks. I feel pretty fortunate to have come across your entire web pages and look forward to really more brilliant moments reading here. Thanks again for a lot of things.

    Comment by vrbo — November 19, 2011 @ 1:46 am

12. I am glad to be a visitor of this complete web blog, thank you for this rare information!

    Comment by laptop sales — November 19, 2011 @ 3:10 am

13. After study a couple of of the weblog posts on your web site now, and I actually like your approach of blogging. I bookmarked it to my bookmark web site listing and will likely be checking again soon. Pls try my website as well and let me know what you think.

    Comment by www.intermodels.co.uk — November 19, 2011 @ 3:47 am

14. I wanted to put you a very little note to thank you so much yet again over the wonderful things you’ve shared here. This has been certainly extremely open-handed of people like you to allow publicly precisely what most people would have offered for an electronic book to generate some money for themselves, and in particular considering the fact that you could possibly have done it if you considered necessary. Those concepts in addition worked to become great way to be aware that some people have similar dream much like my own to know the truth more and more on the subject of this issue. I’m sure there are several more fun instances in the future for people who looked at your blog.

    Comment by pantech c300 — November 19, 2011 @ 5:59 am

15. Hello! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this site? I’m getting tired of WordPress because I’ve had issues with hackers and I’m looking at options for another platform. I would be great if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.

    Comment by GeneralElectricParts.net — November 19, 2011 @ 8:15 am

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.