There are many PHP editors. I haven’t tested them all and want only to concentrate on the basic ones. My criteria are :
- free software
- light interface
- and above all, no proprietary code
Under Windows
I have never tried to use Dreamweaver because of its cost and since all files that I got from web designers using Dreamweaver had to be parsed for repeated tags that could alter display on screen, at times.
Notepad2 (freeware), a Scintilla-based text editor. I came to use it as a replacement for Windows Notepad and am still using it.
The most eloquent features provided are :
- visual brace matching
- line numbering
- scripting language selection for highlighting
Yet, it stays a basic text editor that doesn’t provide tabbed editing : each file will be opened in a new window.
Notepad++ (under GPL licence) is a Scintilla-based source code editor with some extra features :
- tabbed editing (several files open in the same window)
- multi-document + multi-view
- zoom,…
The advantage of notepads for scripting is that, even for html purposes, it helps the would-be developer getting deeper into source code…
Under Linux
The only editor I have ever tried is run under KDE and is called Quanta Plus. It is part of KdeWebDev package and can be easily installed through Yast on OpenSuse.
Under Gnome Desktop, BlueFish seems to be prominent.
Notepad2 (win 32)
Notepad++ (win 32)
Quanta Plus (Linux-KDE)
BlueFish (Linux-GNOME)