> What was your order of preference?
I actually see them as hitting slightly different markets in my mind. UltraEdit - A great editor, syntax highlighting, code folding, great SFTP support (I'll still put UltraEdit's SFTP support up against ZDE & Komodo any day). Worked great with a lot of files, always fast, responsive. A couple nice smaller features like the function list for easy navigation. Great Product for part time developers, students, hobbiests working with a variety of languages, or simply maintaining a few small projects. Even after I converted to ZDE, I still used UltraEdit for maintaining the websites I host for friends and family since the SFTP support was so much stronger, a task that has fallen onto Coda since my conversion to MacOS X. Zend Development Environment - Good development environment. You pay for the JVM, converting from a program as responsive as UltraEdit this is something you really feel. But once the app is up and your files are loaded you get very aggressive code completion, it's there all the time (still beats Komodo) with hints and tips trying to help you get your code out. Support for PHPDoc encourages developers to code well, since it not only provides code completion, but parses it for improved tool-tips when calling that function in the future. Some really slick features like code-completion on PHP5 Soap objects (this blew my mind the first time I saw it). CVS & SVN support is a bit weak, you're forced to choose one over the other on an application wide setting (rather than project). Great product for developers who just do PHP, built in debugger(/php install) is a bit limited but works out of the box without any tweaking. I still use ZDE when working with code my students present for things like Indent Code and the Code Analyzer which finds tonnes of bugs in their code (and often mine). Komodo - Good development environment. Not a Java app (no JVM!), but a... different approach. The application was written in XUL, ontop of the firefox codebase. Which likely has a bunch of limitations and problems for the development team, but what it means for you as a developer is that you can extend & tweak the entire IDE to make it suit your needs with JavaScript & python. Add custom actions to the toolbar, right click context menu, whatever you need. You have access to all of Komodo's features via do commands, or you can code your own from scratch. These can be added on an either application or project level. Komodo uses XDebug to handle debugging, which (since it's a free product) can be installed for free on any of your servers, the Komodo application uses a custom php.ini to add the apropriate extension to your local php install for a (hopefully) painless local run. Code completion and syntax highlighting isn't limited to PHP, Komodo supports most dynamic languages, it also understands that a .php document isn't just PHP, it's a multi language buffer and you get full support for HTML, JS & PHP in that document (as well as full DOM support). Great Product for programmers who are able to deal with code completion that's not quite as good as Zend Studio, but enjoy the ability to extend their environment, or the power tools like RxToolkit or the HTTP Inspector (not just another packet sniffer). So, apart from the fact that I use all three, and have all three installed (paralells & bootcamp) Komodo is my top choice, then ZDE, then UE (but UE doesn't really have a prayer, I'm in the wrong OS). paul -- Paul Reinheimer Zend Certified Engineer
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