When it comes to writting code there isn’t much out there for PHP, well I say that, there is the obvious choice being dreamweaver, but the trouble is with Dreameweaver is that it isn’t really that good at it. It knows of a few commands, but most it doesn’t have a clue of.

So we went out in search of something that isn’t crap, and guess what, we found it!

PHP Designer 2008 is a great little program, and little really is a keyword here. Its like 38mb or so in size, which is very small indeed, it’s quick to install, and I guess the winner for me is how cheap it is!

Lets look at the Options You have:

Commercial License, install on multiple machines – 69 EUR
Personal License, non commercial usage – 39 EUR
Academic License for students / teachers – 25 EUR

Now 69 EUR wont break the bank, and you’ll get good support for this product too. When you compare it to the likes of Dreamweaver (which is great), but will also set you back over a thousand pounds in a package, or a good £200-£300 on its own, PHP Designer 2008 wins the price battle.

You can trial it for a few days before you pick yourself a copy – which I do suggest, these sorts of things don’t suit everyone.

Lets talk about a few more features it has:

It has a built in PHP manual, with examples ready incase you need to learn something new or jog your memory on how a function works, you can either use their manual or use the online one.

Code beautifier is a handy tool, instead of spending ages you can use this highly custom tool to help you display your code in a way which makes sense to others.

It can support loads of different code other than PHP, including css, html, javascript, vb, perl, python, java and loads of others.

I guess what I like is how much you can customise it really, I think it’s also going to be around for the next few years, I guess its just because the latest vesrion is 2008, it makes me feel that there will be more in short term future anyway.

You can combine it with WAMP, which is what I use to develop applications / scripts offline.

All the class’s, variables, functions you use are added to the right hand pane so you can easily find them again, but also re-use them, this infact encourages me to name things correctly in the first place with more logical names.

Overall I like it. It’s negatives I guess are that it doesn’t have any already usable common functions like dreamweaver does like inserting / viewing records etc, but thats nothing to say that I can’t just create them and keep a library of reusable functions / classes, so really its not an issue at all.

Go get the trial now!

Thanks

Wuup Team