Editor's words Zend Studio

This review is based on Zend Studio 5.5.0 for Windows, the PHP integrated development studio delivered by Zend Technologies. As I mentioned in a previous review for Maguma Workbench, PHP is considered the 5th popular programming language and is the most popular web scripting language. We can not talk about PHP without mentioning Zend and Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, Zend Technologies Ltd founders. In 1997 they rewrote a parser developed by Rasmus Lerdorf and formed the base of PHP 3. PHP 4 powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released in May 2000 and PHP 5 powered by Zend Engine II was released On July 13, 2004. Already impressed? Just wait to see the product!

First impression
The user graphical interface looks nice providing editor and browser panel, browsing panel, and debugging panel and it delivers debugging tools out of the box. Other IDE's or editors that I've seen before were using DBG, and had to be configured separately.

Preferences
Let's see what you can configure:

• Interface language. You can choose between English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.
• You can set up the PHP version you are going to use 4 or 5
• You can set-up the internal browser you are going to use for previews
• Set the editor to check for external file modification
• Set editor options: tab size, wrapping lines, line ending style (windows or UNIX)
• Set code folding options
• Set code competition options
• Set code highlighting preferences for PHP, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, XML, SQL and diff viewer
• Set debug mode: You can choose between out of the box internal mode and server mode.
• Manage existing PHP or HTML code blocks templates or add new ones. ex: foreach statement
• Choose source control tool: CVS or Subversion

Basic Functionalities

• Code coloring for CSS, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, XML according to the way the colors were set up in preferences.
• Visual brace matching
• Code folding is not as powerful as I’d like. It folds function body but does not fold a if statement and also it does not fold HTML tags in template or pure HTML files.
• Search for current file, current project or specific folder on drive. Replace works only for current file. It supports regexp search but it misses search and replace in all open files, or replace in all files in project.

It's a pity that code folding and search and replace features were not exploited more. If you are planning to use Zend for simple tasks and projects and you are not going to use it's entire capabilities and advanced functions my guess is that you are going to miss these functions and not appreciate the product at it's entire value.

Advanced functionalities

• Auto complete for PHP functions, local functions and even user defined variables
• Function declaration and definition tooltip
• Workspace and project files management and file browser
• Integrated CVS/Subversion client, useful for team working
• Integrated FTP, SFTP client and remote server browser
• Out of the box debugging tools and code analyzer tools allowing you to debug your script in real time while you are typing.
• Out of the box performance profiler tools to identify resource and time consuming code

Other functionalities that I liked

• Smart go to source. Identifies and quickly navigate to element declaration.
• Generate WSDL (Web Services Description language)  file
• Use bookmarks to  mark lines of code allowing you to navigate quickly throughout your scripts
• Browser integrated toolbar for internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox

Support and documentation
An user guide is integrated with the product in the help section. A support knowledge base and a quick FAQ are also available online on Zend site. further you can register and access the Support center, the user forums or request for support. You can also check the developer section for code samples, news or just to follow the developers discussions.

Final words
Probably Zend Studio is the most complex development environment for PHP. The unique features for debugging and performance optimizing, and the possibility to natively integrate with other Zend Products as Zend Guard make it a powerful tool for web development. If you are involved in a complex web development project you should consider using Zend Studio.