Ed,
I won't argue with you about the necessity of these features in a modern
IDE. All I can say is that this is just the initial version, and it came
out with above-minimal set of features that make for a useful PHP
development environment. There's no doubt that there is room for
improvement, and I can assure you that our IDE team isn't sitting back and
watching the sky right now. Most of the features you've mentioned, as well
as others, are scheduled for the next non-bugfix release version of the
IDE. Version 1.0 is hardly where things end. Look at the PHP version
number :)
Zeev
At 01:01 3/2/2001, Ed Finkler wrote:
>I was really pleased to see that Zend had taken the new approach with
>pricing and availability of the Zend IDE, and that they were offering a demo
>version of the product. I downloaded it right away and took it for a spin.
>
>To be honest, I was pretty disappointed with the product. While the
>debugging features look great, otherwise I think the Zend IDE barely
>qualifies as an Integrated Development Environment. Aside from the debugger
>and color coding, there's little offered here that I couldn't get in the
>most basic of text editors.
>
>The product I'm comparing the Zend IDE most to is Allaire's Homesite, which
>we use as our primary code development tool. From an editor standpoint,
>Homesite is simply a superior product.
>Here are the major areas that I feel the Zend IDE falls short:
>
>1) No FTP integration
> This is a major blow to useability for me. Homesite offers nearly
>seamless integration with FTP servers so they appear identical to local
>files. Zend IDE doesn't appear to have any options for this at all.
>
>2) No HTML or PHP shortcuts; lack of customizability?
> Why can't I just highlight some text and hit CTRL+B to wrap <B> tags
>around my selection? What about CTRL+P to insert a print ""; statement?
>Or F5 to insert my own code snippet? Homesite allows us to assign any
>keystroke to any tag, IDE command, or code snippet. We were able to dump
>every single PHP fuction into Homesite as a code snippet, and can assign
>common ones to whatever key strokes we desire. Zend IDE doesn't seem to
>offer any such feature. This was a real disappointment.
>
>3) No intergrated documentation (not even PHP documentation)
> Homesite allows us to add our own HTML-formatted documentation. It
>comes with extensive HTML and CFM documentation, and at least one kind
>fellow converted an older set of the PHP docs to work with the Homesite help
>system. To be honest, I was *shocked* that the Zend IDE didn't offer any
>sort of integrated PHP documentation, let alone the ability to roll your
>own.
>
>4) No regular expression searching/replacing.
> I use this feature frequently in Homesite, even when I'm not actually
>doing development work. Not having it means I have to jump out of the IDE
>to do certain kinds of search and replace work, which sorta defeats the
>whole "Integrated" part of being an IDE.
>
>5) Very little customization ability
> I touched on this before, but want to reiterate it as its own issue.
>Some basic keystroke and color coding customization is available, but all in
>all the Zend IDE really compares poorly to Homesite - and from what I know,
>most other popular text editors - in terms of customization.
>
>6) Database accessSQL Query analyzer
> This is something available in projects like KphpDev, and looks really,
>really useful. I'm surprised this didn't make it into the Zend IDE, as so
>much PHP development uses databases.
>
>7) Price
> Given the small featureset, I have trouble with the cost of the Zend
>IDE -- over $100 for a client license. The debugger is great, but it's
>nearly useless to me without a proper supporting set of tools. I might be
>willing to pay $25 for this per client license.
>
>Frankly, I don't think the Zend IDE is an IDE at all -- it's basically a
>simple text editor with color coding that has an integrated debugger. I was
>really expecting a lot more, given Zend's role in bringing PHP into the
>"real world" of e-business.
>
>I would like to say that I really admire what Zend is doing. I think you
>guys are on the right track. We need the kinds of things you're
>developing... but in terms of the IDE, we need a lot more to be convinced to
>drop our current editors.
>
>---------------
>Ed Finkler
>Supervisor of Web Development
>Golden Dome Media
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>219-631-1107
>
>
>
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Zeev Suraski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CTO & co-founder, Zend Technologies Ltd. http://www.zend.com/
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