Reviewed – Codelobster PHP Edition

With increasing complexity and options available for website development works, a handy and comfortable editor/ IDE is a necessity. In this respect, if an editor is available for free it would certainly be a great relief. Here we feature one such editor for PHP based web development – Codelobster PHP Edition .

Some important features of this program:

• Code highlighting depending on a type. Mixed code is also thus supported, so the area of HTML will be highlighted as HTML, PHP as PHP, and JavaScript as JavaScript in the same file. There is possibility of choice from color schemes, including popular IDEs.
• Powerful auto completion for HTML, PHP, CSS and JavaScript, including HTML5 and CSS3. For PHP the structure of project is fully recognized, and the complete list of methods falls out in the proper places.
• HTML/CSS inspector on the type of Firebug, which allows to easily correlating the selected elements of page with a code and proper style.
• Context help on all supported languages. By pressing F1 key the page with detailed description for current tag, attribute or function will be opened.
• PHP debugger. PHP debugger allows executing PHP scripts incrementally, watching the values of all variables in every line.
• Support of FTP allows to work straight with a remote server and to do all necessary changes with files;
• The portable option allows using editor without the preliminary installation.
• Other useful utilities: pair highlighting, possibility of blocks selection, collapsing, tooltips, navigation on descriptions of functions and included files at withholding of the key of CTRL, viewing of structure of files and project, preview in a browser, book-marks, and all other standard possibilities for work with a code.
• SQL manager allows producing all necessary actions with a database – to add, delete, edit a structure and records in tables, to export data, execute SQL queries. Highlighting and auto-completion works for SQL files also. (Only available with paid version – Lite)

Special plugins are also available to work with (Available for paid version only)

• CMS: Drupal, Joomla
• PHP frameworks: CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Yii
• JavaScript library: JQuery
• WordPress blogging engine
• Smarty template engine