Writing an ongoing series of articles on PHP gives you a lot of
insight into the world of PHP developers. I've talked with many
PHP programmers, and one thing that surprises me most is how few
use IDEs. Most use text editors, such as Notepad on Microsoft®
Windows®, Emacs, or Vim. The text editors I mentioned (and
others I didn't) are great -- I don't want to start a pointless
war over which editor is better. However, no text editor really
gives you much insight into your PHP code. In particular, none
views a PHP project as more than a directory of files. Let me
take you into the world of IDEs, show what you can -- or should
-- expect from them, and provide seven examples from the most
popular IDE options. In short, an IDE provides a one-stop shop
for your coding work. An IDE contains an editor in which you can
edit the code, debug the code, view your code in a browser
(often embedded), and check in and out of source code control.
To support that functionality, an IDE has a set of features you
don't find in a