What tools should not work with a PHP / Web developer?

Question

There are many IDEs for PHP development, but I am interested in all OTHER brilliant little tools and applications and websites that people use every day to make PHP development a little easier.

Answer 1

I have a whole list of tools that I cannot live without:

• Eclipse with PHP development tools (or Zend Studio for Eclipse) . Both of these features are great environments with awesome PHP editing features. They also provide CSS and JavaScript (JS) editing capabilities now. With existing Eclipse extensions, you can get a ton of functionality out of the box.
• Notepad ++ . Great text editor with syntax highlighting and tabs. I use this to quickly edit and edit huge text files that slow down the eclipse.
• Filezilla If you are running on Windows, I suggest Filezilla as an optional FTP application. It works great, relatively fast and free.
• PuTTY . You will need SSH on remote servers several times. Use this for your terminal commands. I use it every day.
• Browsers You will need to test so that you have every browser that you can reasonably install on your system. Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome, etc.
• Firebug is the ultimate interface debugging tool. I can’t count the number of times that Firebug helped me decipher the problems with my code or the legacy system I'm working on.
• FirePHP . Another great tool. This one connects to Firebug and allows you to use the server-side PHP library to create custom headers that will be displayed as log messages. You can write arrays, strings, ints, double, etc.
• SVN It is obvious. If you somehow do not use source control, then you simply do not develop safely. On Windows, I use TortoiseSVN, unless I am in my IDE, then I use the built-in SVN support.
• Redmine An amazing project management tool (in RoR) that makes my life infinitely easy. It is highly customizable and helps you have a good workflow throughout the project.
• Harvest . Intermediate time tracking using widgets for most major operating systems. If you are developing, you better keep track of your time so you know where it goes.
• Adobe CS If you work with designers at all, they are going to send you the PSD files that you need to encode. If you do not have Adobe Create Suite (some version), then you will have a serious drawback.
• jQuery I no longer enjoy writing JavaScript without a library. jQuery is awesome and you feel like you can do anything anytime. His collection of plugins is also amazing, and I recommend this JS framework over any others.

This is pretty much all I can think of from my head, but that’s almost all that I use every day.

Answer 2

I am surprised that so far no one has mentioned XDebug. Turn on XDebug in your development and get profiling, stack tracing, and if your IDE supports it, breakpoints. The most worthy tool.

Answer 3

I could not live without:

• Eclipse with the Aptana plugin (allows me to develop html, javascript, php and css in a mostly harmless environment) and the Subclipse plug-in (for integration with subversion).
• Firebug, Web Developer Toolbar, YSlow, Firefox Throttle
• XAMPP local installation
• SQLYog for MySQL development

Answer 4

I am using Aptana for an IDE.

It has built-in FTP and great tips and code completion for HTML, JavaScript and PHP (with a plugin).

http://aptana.com/studio/download <- free community version (what I use)

Answer 5

1) Editor: TextMate, I really like this editor.

2) Debugging: a combination of writing robust bug reports in software, Firebug and a web developer (firefox plugins) and apache weblog analysis

3) Tools: jQuery is my favorite toy right now, I do a lot of neat things with it and really bring some database management applications to life.

4) Framework: I have yet to implement a framework for developing PHP. Besides the few fragments and things that I have compiled, I pretty much write everything by hand. I would really like to accept the structure, but just did not have time to sit down and study it. I'm pretty much going to go with Cake or CI - what do you guys think?

5) Cross-browser testing: Honestly, I just use live machines. I have heard very mixed things about .org browsers and have not explored other options. We simply test all of our materials on multiple platforms / browsers to ensure compatibility across the board.

• Nikolay

Answer 6

On top of my head are things that I could not live in without:

• Nice lightweight MVC framework (in particular CodeIgniter for me)
• My own unit testing system, Toast
• Local "LAMP" -like environment (MAMP for me, since I'm on a Mac - it’s literally a one-click installation, and everything just works)
• JQuery
• ApacheBench (ab) for benchmarking
• My Macbook (for stability and spyware protection - I get significantly more work with less frustration than when I used Windows)
• browsershots.org
• Firefox Plugins: Web Developer and / or Firebug (with YSlow and FirePHP)

Other things that should be on this list, but not, because I personally have not yet found a suitable tool:

• Svn
• Really nice FTP (?) Client that can fully synchronize my IDEs, local and remote environments
• Good, convenient project management and bug tracking system.
• Good CSS structure

Answer 7

PHP projects can be stored in Team Foundation Server. This provides end-to-end project management, process management, application lifecycle, source management, build automation and reporting.

I know that this answer is unlikely to receive many “ups”, but if you know what you are doing, TFS can make an amazing contribution to projects in any language. Most recently, I moved the Cobol mainframe to TFS, it works with pleasure.

Answer 8

I could not live; 1.codeigniter framework. 2.Filezilla ftp. 3. and a good IDE,

Answer 9

phpMyAdmin (assuming you are using MySQL, of course).

Answer 10

You did not mention which operating system you are using, so I can’t pass my list on what might be useful to you:

• vim
• ETags
• php_codesniffer
• php_unit
• selenium
• php_uml
• Netbeans
• pman (php manual on the command line)
• mantis for bugtracking
• diversion / git
• PEAR (using both pear components and project deployment)
• firefox with these extensions:
  • arsonist
  • Screengrab
  • Webdeveloper
  • dummy lipsum
  • Yslow
• Solyp SQL Developer is also useful

Answer 11

PhpEd for debugging PHP, going through code, executing special commands, etc. This is vvv good.

Answer 12

Zend Step Debugger / Zend Studio

Php.net documentation

Any IDE with syntax highlighting.

I think now you can add stackoverflow to this list :)