What's a good software for PHP editing?

monoxera · Oct 23, 2009, 01:58 AM

Hello. I edit a lot of .php files for my website.

What is a good php program that is popular?

Thanks

BertyBoy · Oct 23, 2009, 03:12 AM

There's more HTML / PHP editors than there are flavours of ice-cream.

What are you looking for in an editor ?

full development environment ? low-cost ? free ?
tabbed windows ?
syntax highlighting ?
variable name auto-complete ?
built-in FTP ?
built-in document version history ?

3 simple editors are: TextMate, BBEdit, and Komodo Edit.

Angelo95210 · Oct 23, 2009, 03:18 AM

I use BBEdit. I love it and would never change.

But Textwrangler which is free is perfectly fine as well, it's a lighted version of BBEdit. Although you don't have a syntax reference in it.

Mitthrawnuruodo · Oct 23, 2009, 03:54 AM

Moved the thread to the Web development forum, where you might find more people with PHP experience...

Myself, I use Coda on a daily basis (for on-line editing), with the free TextWrangler as my second choice (and for the odd off-line editing).

Also, check out Taco HTML, which I used a bit back when it was free, that features a pretty neat live preview of PHP code. There should be a trial available.

Also, take a look at the stickies here in the Web forum, there's plenty of recommendations for a wide range og editors, and you might find something better suited for your needs.

monoxera · Oct 23, 2009, 05:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mitthrawnuruodo

Moved the thread to the Web development forum, where you might find more people with PHP experience...

Myself, I use Coda on a daily basis (for on-line editing), with the free TextWrangler as my second choice (and for the odd off-line editing).

Also, check out Taco HTML, which I used a bit back when it was free, that features a pretty neat live preview of PHP code. There should be a trial available.

Also, take a look at the stickies here in the Web forum, there's plenty of recommendations for a wide range og editors, and you might find something better suited for your needs.

Thanks for moving. I know I tried searching but there were TOO many threads (you knwo what i Mean

But yea, I wanted the latest "news" on what's the best software.

about that taco HTML... it shows you a LIVE preview of the website if you change 1 little thing to a code?

Thanks to all other users as well, will give BBEDIT a try as soon as my mac is repaired from apple store

Angelo95210 · Oct 23, 2009, 06:55 AM

You can couple BBEdit/TextWrangler with CyberDuck. They work great together for online editing.

monoxera · Oct 23, 2009, 08:07 AM

How about like... live preview editing?

Mitthrawnuruodo · Oct 23, 2009, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monoxera

about that taco HTML... it shows you a LIVE preview of the website if you change 1 little thing to a code?

Yup:

http://tacosw.com/htmledit/screenshots.php

SrWebDeveloper · Oct 23, 2009, 08:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monoxera

How about like... live preview editing?

Unless I am misunderstanding you, remember PHP is parsed server side when the web page is executed. It's not like updating an image using preview in a graphic editor. The way most developers work is they build a private sandbox to develop the site locally, i.e. right on your Mac using a product like MAMP which creates a MySQL/Apache/PHP environment. You'll use whatever development software you wish and browse to your sandbox site and test pages (i.e. PHP) locally on your own Mac or LAN. When you got it just right, publish to a webhost on the Internet, that's your production environment.

The WYSIWYG editor will only show you layout and images, template stuff.
Source view is for PHP coding and HTML, XML, whatever.
The browser will show you the final parsed view (PHP has executed, page is rendered and output to browser).

The sandbox is a "live preview" if you follow. Please let me know if I'm off base here.

-jim

angelwatt · Oct 23, 2009, 08:39 AM

BBEdit is my main editor. There's a number of people who also like TextMate, which is in the same league as BBEdit. Lately, I've been trying out Aptana, which gives you a IDE experience and code completion for PHP and other languages. I've had some issues with it though, like sluggishness, and I couldn't get the live preview to work with a virtual host setup. Being free though, makes it worth checking out. I think it has a lot of promise, though I still stick with BBEdit for everything.

SrWebDeveloper · Oct 23, 2009, 09:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angelwatt

I couldn't get the live preview to work with a virtual host setup.

You referring to the Eclipse PDT plugin in Aptana as to live preview? If so, it has a built in PHP interpreter but it's not the same as a hosted environment, I'd not trust it. Am I wrong to think so?

BertyBoy · Oct 23, 2009, 10:09 AM

Should have said, if you're using Firefox as your primary web browser for previewing the pages, you'll definitely want the Web Developer add-on. But I'm sure you have it already.

savar · Oct 23, 2009, 12:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by monoxera

Hello. I edit a lot of .php files for my website.

What is a good php program that is popular?

Thanks

TextMate is my favorite... but costs $$$. (And its priced in GBP so as the USD declines, TextMate gets more expensive. I'm glad I bought it a long time ago

)

angelwatt · Oct 23, 2009, 12:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SrWebDeveloper

You referring to the Eclipse PDT plugin in Aptana as to live preview? If so, it has a built in PHP interpreter but it's not the same as a hosted environment, I'd not trust it. Am I wrong to think so?

I have the standalone Aptana, not the plugin version for Eclipse as I use NetBeans rather than Eclipse. The live preview worked for localhost stuff, but for my virtual hosts the settings didn't let me configure things enough for the preview to work properly. Not a huge deal as I can just have MAMP running and view things in Firefox like I normally do.

clemsonhomerun · Oct 23, 2009, 08:10 PM

The one i keep coming back to is Komodo.

Have used it for a while now, as well as others (aptana, eclipse, zend studio, dreamweaver etc), but Komodo still my favorite IDE.

I couple it with smultron for my quick updates where he IDE isnt needed.

monoxera · Oct 23, 2009, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SrWebDeveloper

Unless I am misunderstanding you, remember PHP is parsed server side when the web page is executed. It's not like updating an image using preview in a graphic editor. The way most developers work is they build a private sandbox to develop the site locally, i.e. right on your Mac using a product like MAMP which creates a MySQL/Apache/PHP environment. You'll use whatever development software you wish and browse to your sandbox site and test pages (i.e. PHP) locally on your own Mac or LAN. When you got it just right, publish to a webhost on the Internet, that's your production environment.

The WYSIWYG editor will only show you layout and images, template stuff.
Source view is for PHP coding and HTML, XML, whatever.
The browser will show you the final parsed view (PHP has executed, page is rendered and output to browser).

The sandbox is a "live preview" if you follow. Please let me know if I'm off base here.

-jim

Yes, thank for you for informative post.

I do use MAMP and edit it locally then publish it to my actual FTP.
But the thing is, does Taco HTML show LIVE preview of it while I'm editing? Say, I edit a text, then will it show in the live preview portion, what I changed?
I know sandbox is "live preview", but it's such a hassle to check up on what parts I missed since I'm fairly new to PHP and plus, firefox keeps cache of stuff so sometimes I have to reload like 10 times before I see the changes.

Will look at Web Developer Add-On ^_^

jaikob · Oct 24, 2009, 12:02 AM

Bought both a Textmate and Coda license. I absolutely love Coda. I guess we are all narrowing it down to:

Textmate, BBEdit, and Coda.

Spend the cash, or download the trial. They are all worth it.

SrWebDeveloper · Oct 24, 2009, 03:02 AM

As to Firefox caching pages, always refresh using the F5 key, simple as that. Same for MSIE, btw.

I want to clarify that WYSIWYG mode is of course live preview for HTML, but not usually for server side intepretation of PHP source. Eclipse and other tools really are tiny sandboxes, i.e. PHP running inside a Java environment locally on your machine spawned by the IDE. They interpret code okay until you start getting into complex PHP development where server side system calls and API development because nothing can replace the real server, and no two servers are exactly the same environment. So I don't put much faith in them at present, and prefer local sandboxing. On a Mac it's real close to a majority of the production webhosts out there because Mac is Debian which is Linux. Most dedicated hosts, VPS use some form of *nix or Solaris or BSD - the folks who work with IIS and MSSQL or Microsoft whatever.net have their own sandbox worlds, too, in my opinion.

-jim

Angelo95210 · Oct 24, 2009, 03:08 AM

I think this live-preview functionality is a gadget. Nothing better than to preview in Firefox with the web-developer plugin installed. You can do this on a sandbox, thanks to cyberduck that can download and edit the file with an external editor.

savar · Oct 24, 2009, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SrWebDeveloper

On a Mac it's real close to a majority of the production webhosts out there because Mac is Debian which is Linux. Most dedicated hosts, VPS use some form of *nix or Solaris or BSD - the folks who work with IIS and MSSQL or Microsoft whatever.net have their own sandbox worlds, too, in my opinion.

-jim

MacOS X is based on BSD -- Unix -- actually.

But your point is true. I develop on my Macbook using all the same programs that we run on RedHat and Debian Linux in our production environments: Apache, PHP, MySQL.

In fact, Snow Leopard includes PHP 5.3, which was quite a surprise!

You have to pay an extra $2k to get PHP 5.2 on a RedHat server, and 5.3 isn't available at all.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. If you want to do real development, you need a real environment. Running it locally is smart because its fast (no network latency) and you can build web apps even when you're not online. I can do work on the train, plane, starbucks, etc.

SrWebDeveloper · 11:40 AM

Oops, you're right - OS X is based on Mach, developed as a replacement for the kernel for BSD as you correctly noted. Thank you for mentioning that.

Seems like most of us agree live preview is good for basic HTML layout and design in localhost, but really FF with the Dev tools (and remember to press F5 to avoid cache issues when needed) is a pretty popular approach. I found this thread very informative and interesting so far.

Side notes about Red Hat/PHP5.3 -- yes, as an RPM via the RHN you're correct. I installed the latest PHP5 the old fashioned way on our RHEL5 - downloaded the source from php.net and compiled manually using make/install. For those who want PHP5 via simplified YUM installs to manage updates, one can also get PHP 5.3 RPM's from the Remi test repository. There might be a few other repositories as well, if one Google searches. The remi test repository RPM is very stable based on feedback I've seen, but of course it's not technically a production release.

-jim

Oct 23, 2009, 01:58 AM	#1
monoxera macrumors member Join Date: Apr 2009	What's a good software for PHP editing? Hello. I edit a lot of .php files for my website. What is a good php program that is popular? Thanks
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 03:18 AM	#3
Angelo95210 macrumors 6502a Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Paris, France	I use BBEdit. I love it and would never change. But Textwrangler which is free is perfectly fine as well, it's a lighted version of BBEdit. Although you don't have a syntax reference in it. __________________ Hackintosh G31M-S2L - Macbook 3,1
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 03:54 AM	#4
Mitthrawnuruodo Demi-God (Moderator) Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Bergen, Norway	Moved the thread to the Web development forum, where you might find more people with PHP experience... Myself, I use Coda on a daily basis (for on-line editing), with the free TextWrangler as my second choice (and for the odd off-line editing). Also, check out Taco HTML, which I used a bit back when it was free, that features a pretty neat live preview of PHP code. There should be a trial available. Also, take a look at the stickies here in the Web forum, there's plenty of recommendations for a wide range og editors, and you might find something better suited for your needs. __________________ Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it; those who fail to learn history correctly... why, they are simply doomed.
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 06:55 AM	#6
Angelo95210 macrumors 6502a Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Paris, France	You can couple BBEdit/TextWrangler with CyberDuck. They work great together for online editing. __________________ Hackintosh G31M-S2L - Macbook 3,1
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 08:39 AM	#10
angelwatt Demi-God (Moderator emeritus) Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Ohio	BBEdit is my main editor. There's a number of people who also like TextMate, which is in the same league as BBEdit. Lately, I've been trying out Aptana, which gives you a IDE experience and code completion for PHP and other languages. I've had some issues with it though, like sluggishness, and I couldn't get the live preview to work with a virtual host setup. Being free though, makes it worth checking out. I think it has a lot of promise, though I still stick with BBEdit for everything. __________________ My Regular Expression Testing Tool Vim Commands Cheat Sheet
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 03:12 AM	#2
BertyBoy macrumors 6502 Join Date: Feb 2009	There's more HTML / PHP editors than there are flavours of ice-cream. What are you looking for in an editor ? full development environment ? low-cost ? free ? tabbed windows ? syntax highlighting ? variable name auto-complete ? built-in FTP ? built-in document version history ? 3 simple editors are: TextMate, BBEdit, and Komodo Edit.
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 08:07 AM	#7
monoxera Thread Starter macrumors member Join Date: Apr 2009	How about like... live preview editing?
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 10:09 AM	#12
BertyBoy macrumors 6502 Join Date: Feb 2009	Should have said, if you're using Firefox as your primary web browser for previewing the pages, you'll definitely want the Web Developer add-on. But I'm sure you have it already.
	0

Oct 23, 2009, 08:10 PM	#15
clemsonhomerun macrumors newbie Join Date: Jul 2009	PHP Editor The one i keep coming back to is Komodo. Have used it for a while now, as well as others (aptana, eclipse, zend studio, dreamweaver etc), but Komodo still my favorite IDE. I couple it with smultron for my quick updates where he IDE isnt needed.
	0

Oct 24, 2009, 12:02 AM	#17
jaikob macrumors 6502 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Freeland, MI	Bought both a Textmate and Coda license. I absolutely love Coda. I guess we are all narrowing it down to: Textmate, BBEdit, and Coda. Spend the cash, or download the trial. They are all worth it. __________________ iPad 2 64GB White , Mid 2011 iMac 3.4GHz i7 12GB Ram ATI 6970M 2GB Apple SSD + 1TB
	0

Oct 24, 2009, 03:02 AM	#18
SrWebDeveloper macrumors 68000 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Alexandria, VA, USA	As to Firefox caching pages, always refresh using the F5 key, simple as that. Same for MSIE, btw. I want to clarify that WYSIWYG mode is of course live preview for HTML, but not usually for server side intepretation of PHP source. Eclipse and other tools really are tiny sandboxes, i.e. PHP running inside a Java environment locally on your machine spawned by the IDE. They interpret code okay until you start getting into complex PHP development where server side system calls and API development because nothing can replace the real server, and no two servers are exactly the same environment. So I don't put much faith in them at present, and prefer local sandboxing. On a Mac it's real close to a majority of the production webhosts out there because Mac is Debian which is Linux. Most dedicated hosts, VPS use some form of *nix or Solaris or BSD - the folks who work with IIS and MSSQL or Microsoft whatever.net have their own sandbox worlds, too, in my opinion. -jim __________________ Jim Goldbloom Sr. Web Developer, owner GoldTechPro, LLC http://www.GoldTechPro.com
	0

Oct 24, 2009, 03:08 AM	#19
Angelo95210 macrumors 6502a Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Paris, France	I think this live-preview functionality is a gadget. Nothing better than to preview in Firefox with the web-developer plugin installed. You can do this on a sandbox, thanks to cyberduck that can download and edit the file with an external editor. __________________ Hackintosh G31M-S2L - Macbook 3,1
	0

Oct 25, 2009, 11:29 AM	#21
SrWebDeveloper macrumors 68000 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Alexandria, VA, USA	Oops, you're right - OS X is based on Mach, developed as a replacement for the kernel for BSD as you correctly noted. Thank you for mentioning that. Seems like most of us agree live preview is good for basic HTML layout and design in localhost, but really FF with the Dev tools (and remember to press F5 to avoid cache issues when needed) is a pretty popular approach. I found this thread very informative and interesting so far. Side notes about Red Hat/PHP5.3 -- yes, as an RPM via the RHN you're correct. I installed the latest PHP5 the old fashioned way on our RHEL5 - downloaded the source from php.net and compiled manually using make/install. For those who want PHP5 via simplified YUM installs to manage updates, one can also get PHP 5.3 RPM's from the Remi test repository. There might be a few other repositories as well, if one Google searches. The remi test repository RPM is very stable based on feedback I've seen, but of course it's not technically a production release. -jim __________________ Jim Goldbloom Sr. Web Developer, owner GoldTechPro, LLC http://www.GoldTechPro.com Last edited by SrWebDeveloper; Oct 25, 2009 at 11:40 AM. Reason: added remi link
	0


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