I’ve been using Zend Studio Neon for the past three weeks and I have to say, for something that is free (beta software) it is quite good. Compared to using VS 2005, Zend Studio Neon has its advantages, since Visual Studio doesn’t handle PHP well. Zend Studio Neon also has areas that I didn’t like.
What I love about Zend Studio Neon
- It is not Eclipse
Well, technically it is and while I haven’t completely played around with PDT, I can say that I don’t like developing PHP in plain Eclipse. Tried Eclipse for an hour. Hated it. Tried PDT for three hours, couldn’t get Subversion plugin to work. Hated it. Spent the last three weeks at work and at home developing with Zend Studio Neon. Love it.
It has missing features that Visual Studio and Dreamweaver have, but hell, I can always switch to those applications when I need to use them and still maintain my projects in Zend Studio Neon. Well, I have used Visual Studio for searching through files. However, I think I found an area in Zend Studio Neon that might do this, but I forget where I found it and I don’t have a need for it that often.
- Subversion
Not as much as a pain to set up, so I love it.
- PHPDoc
Well, it has an older version of phpDocumentor, but oh well, I think pressing a button and having an application build the pages for you is golden. I would be happier if it supported the latest version, since I use @uses and other tags that Zend Studio Neon doesn’t recognize nor give me the choice in the dropdown menu.
- PHPUnit
Has the full list of PHPUnit methods and parameter list. I usually have the PHPUnit manual open in my browser, “Dude! I didn’t know that method existed, it does exactly what I need!” I don’t like how it doesn’t allow you to choose multiple functions to include in a single test case, but that is okay. I do like how it will take a class and create all of the test methods for each of the methods that exist in the class. I also like how you can add Test cases to a test suite.
I did have problems with the PHP environment (PDO class is unavailable, WTF? It runs in the browser, therefore no, PDO class does exist), but it is beta, so hopefully that gets fixed.
- Just about everything else
The only thing I didn’t love about Zend Studio, was that I had to pay for it. Other than that, it has everything I wish Visual Studio and Dreamweaver would implement for PHP.
What I hate about Zend Studio Neon
- Is final going to stay free?
The answer to my inquiry is “No.” The beta is free, but the final is not.
Going to have to decide whether to pay for Zend Studio for Eclipse or switch to PDT and see if I can learn it instead. I do have the money to buy Zend Studio for Eclipse, but I’ll probably switch over to PDT at work.
Can’t find a clear answer anywhere. I can make the assumption that it will cost money, since Zend is saying that if you pay for Zend Studio, you can get Zend Studio for Eclipse for free. Which leads me to think that if I just wanted Zend Studio for Eclipse, I’ll have to pay as much as for Zend Studio. Not that I would mind, since I’m not “smart” enough to work with Eclipse and need some hand holding to work with PHP in Eclipse.Until they come out and say, “It is going to be free!” or “It is going to cost your soul” then I’ll be willing to download or sell my soul to obtain it. Either way, I just can’t find anything that states whether or not it is going to be free.
- FTP Support
It exists, yes. It is just in such an obscure place that if you don’t use it often enough, you’ll forget. Where is that Remote Systems again? Also, it doesn’t seem (beta software) to correctly connect to a few FTP servers. Not sure if that is a bug, since I haven’t used Eclipse for that purpose.
Dreamweaver makes FTP extremely easy, but is crap when it comes to Subversion and Zend Studio does Subversion very well. I’ll take Subversion any day, since I’ll be migrating to that systems for all of my uploading and downloading needs.
FTP? Who needs you?
- Don’t do what I think
Have this same problem with Dreamweaver. It appears that both Dreamweaver and Zend Studio Neon thinks I’m an idiot who needs a list of available objects and variables. Even after I wrote the variable or object in the parameter list (Of course, you can just as easily press ‘Esc’ and solve this, but I’m not quite a power user yet). So it is annoying, but I’ll get over it eventually.
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