Last week we looked at 22 Neat Editors for Windows. But sometimes, a code editor simply isn't enough, especially when you're working with things like databases and classes. Which IDE will you prefer? Hopefully you'll find it below!
Instead of sticking with Windows applications, I've opened it up to all three major platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are a few IDEs here that will only run on one OS, but you'll find that most have a version for all three.
Windows IDEs
Visual Web Developer
- Free
Visual Web Developer is basically a stripped down version of Visual Studio, with only the web development tools in place. It has the same great project management and database tools that VS has, only it costs $299 less. This app is aimed at beginners, so you can get starter kits along with it, and there's a great Beginning Developer Learning Center online.
phpDesigner
- 75€ (~$105)
www.phpeditors.com gave phpDesigner a 5 star rating, saying it was a "super fast PHP IDE with many features." To back this up, phpDesigner offers support for PHP debugging and profiling; It also supports all standard web languages, and offers TortoiseSVN support, and live error detection for PHP, HTML, and CSS. A code snippets library and built-in PHP manual for beginners only sweeten this pot.
PHPEdit
- 179€ (~$248)
PHPEdit is a pretty good PHP IDE; it offers the debugging (even a Firefox debugging plug-in) and database support (easy query building and data visualizing) that you would expect, along with time-saving keyboard templates that allow you to quickly set up your PHP code structure. With PHPEdit, it's pretty easy to connect to a server and use all the features, including auto-suggestion and -completion, with remote files: PHPEdit takes care of all the downloading and uploading for you.
Visual Studio 2008
- $299 (Standard Edition)
Visual Studio is basically the industry standard for writing .NET code, but it's also good for web development. It's strong point is ASP .NET (obviously), but it's pretty good with traditional web languages, offering extensive "IntelliSense" (code completion) for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. There's no native PHP support, but there is a plug-in of sorts that can add it (Rumour has it that VS 2010 will support PHP). The code debugger is amazing if you're using ASP .NET, and now you can debug JavaScript as well. Visual Studio has so many more powerful features; it's a good product for anyone who uses ASP .NET.
Expression Web
- $299
Expression Web is a pretty neat application. It offers tons of CSS support, turning creating and applying your styles into a graphical experience. Of course, if you prefer writing code, it has the IntelliSense of Visual Studio for CSS, as well as HTML. As you'd expect, there is ASP.NET support, but there's also PHP support. Another neat feature: Expression Web takes note of which doctype you're using and lets you know if you're not keeping the rules; it's basically built-in, real-time (X)HTML validation.
Bonus: Recently, Microsoft came out with Expression Web SuperPreview, a tool that helps you preveiw your websites in multiple versions of Internet Explorer without having to install them all. You can check out your site in IE6, IE8 or IE8 in compatibility mode, or you can compare a live site to an image. The neatest part is that you can overlay two versions to see inconsistencies.
PhpEd
- $299
PhpEd comes with built in PHP, HTML, and CSS validators. It has code completion for those languages as well; and of course, there's PHP debugging and profiling. PhpEd has one innovative feature that I haven't seen before: dynamic syntax highlighting. Imagine a scenario where you have multiple languages in the same file (not really plausible coding, but understandable with HTML and PHP at least): if dynamic syntax highlighting is on, only the language your cursor is on with be highlighted; all the other code will appear as normal text.
Mac IDEs
Coda
- $99
Coda may be the best IDE for the Mac, and it's one of the few IDEs created with the sole intent of web development. Its concept of sites is pretty neat, and you can remotely edit files on almost any server. With the ability to collaborate on file with anyone in the world, and a clips repository for frequently typed snippets, Coda really looks promising. By the time you have a Javascript console, Dom inspector, CSS editor, and built-in terminal, you're looking at an application that would make me consider switching to a Mac.
CSSEdit
- 59.95€ (~$78)
An IDE for CSS? That's right, and an amazingly slick one at that. With built in validation, "Milestones" (Code versioning), and a really neat selector builder, writing CSS is a snap with CSSEdit. And then there are tools that let you inspect other websites to see how it's done. This tool is great for both CSS newbies and veterans.
Linux IDEs
BlueFish
- Free
Bluefish aims to be a light and clean IDE for linux users. It offers project support, as well as the ability to access remote files on almost any server. It has very robust search and replace, code completion for HTML and XML, and a function reference browser for PHP, CSS, Python, and HTML.
Integrate external programs such as make, lint, weblint, xmllint, tidy, javac, or your own program or script to handle advanced text processing or error detection. Integrate external filters of your liking, pipe your document (or just the current selected text) through sort, sed, awk or any custom script.
Windows and Mac IDEs
Dreamweaver CS4
- $399
For those who love the other Creative Suite applications, Adobe's Dreamweaver will be perfect; it integrates very well with PhotoShop. It's a great editor for JavaScript, offering code hints and JS framework integration. It offers interesting CSS support: you create CSS rules and Dreamweaver explains how it will fit in with other rules. Then, Live View enables you to preview your coding without leaving the program. Dreamweaver may also win the asthetic beauty contest in today's roundup . . . at least for Windows!
Windows, Mac, & Linux IDEs
Eclipse
- Free
Eclipse is a very powerful IDE, that can do almost all things programming through its plugins. I downloaded Eclipse with the PHP Development Tools, which may be a good idea if you don't already have Eclipse. This offers PHP debugging, as well as syntax highlighing and some code completion. Eclispe can also support JavaServer Pages, and using a CVS repository.
Aptana Studio
- Free
Aptana Studio could be described as Eclipse for web development only. It's available as either a standalone app or as a plug-in for Eclipse, and it claims to be "The Leading IDE for Web App Development."
With plug-ins, you can have support PHP, Ruby on Rails, Java, and more. It also has support for Libraries like jQuery, Prototype, YUI, and others, making your development process easier. SQL database tools, JavaScript debugging, it's all there; the only thing I dislike about Aptana is that it takes forever to open on my computer; no, it's not the computer: I can open two instances of Visual Studio in the time it takes Aptana to open. Aptana (the company) also offers hosting for your projects, so if you use that service, the IDE ties those services in perfectly.
Netbeans
- Free
This open-source IDE is a sweet deal: whether you're developing in PHP, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, or something else, you'll find rich editing features, as well as support for FTP and MySQL. At least with PHP, it offers light on-the-go debugging, alerting you to errors as you type. Netbeans also has a nice code navigator, and offers code completion and integrated documentation for frameworks like jQuery and Mootools.
Nvu
- Free
Nvu (pronouced N-view for "a new view") markets itself as a free alternative to programs like Dreamweaver and Expression Web. It's aimed at beginners and offers a strong WYSIWYG editor, but you can definitely hand-code. For advanced users, Nvu can be extended with "a dash of JavaScript."
Spket IDE
- $29.90 (free for non-commercial use)
Spket claims to be especially for RIA development. It offers code completion for Javascript and Flex, not to mention support for a number of JavaScript libraries. It has a content outline view that will let you examine the logical structure of your scripts. It also includes features for Silverlight development, including XAML completion and code completion for JavaScript based on the Silverlight Object Model. Then, there's support for SVG and XUL.
IntlliJ IDEA
- $249 (Personal Edition)
Although IntelliJ IDEA is primarily aimed at Java developers, it has support for a lot of technologies used on the web, from HTML to JavaScript, Flex, and SQL. It offers JavaScript debugging and refactoring, as well as code completion and a structure view. Similar features are available for Flex developers as well. For (X)HTML, IntelliJ IDEA has code inspection that will alert you to browser compatibility errors, and apparently even direct you to a www.quirksmode.org bug report for more information.
Komodo IDE
- $295
Komodo IDE is a made especially for "dynamic languages and open technologies." Besides the standard web languages—HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, and so on—it also supports Ruby, python, Tcl, and more. It's got a solid editor, with code tips and a bit of auto-completion. The debugger works well, and the program is extensible; there's even a pretty neat snippets feature that helps you keep your code well documented and a regular expression tester.
Note: I overlooked Komodo IDE's free little sister, Komodo Edit in last week's roundup. This was unintentional, as I hadn't really seen it before. From the comments and what I've seen, it looks like a pretty good code editor, so I'm going to have to check it out!
Zend Studio
- $399
Zend Studio is an Eclipse plug-in, but it's really an IDE in itself. It's aimed mainly at PHP development (with an obvious focus on the Zend Framework), and it's got a ton of features. It offers real time error detection, and plenty of database support, (S)FTP, local and server debugging, code refactoring, and source code control options . Of course, it also supports JavaScript and HTML with syntax highlighting and code assist.
Extra
While researching for this article, I found an interesting article: "Seven great PHP IDEs compared"; although the main part of the article looks at a few PHP IDEs, I found the section "What is an IDE?" rather interesting.
That's It!
Like last week, I might have left out your favourite IDEs. If I did, let me know! If not, which IDE do you use?
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Diego SA June 3rd
I know some of them, but I’d like to have Coda. Don’t remember know, is it free? It isn’t, is it?
( )Mike Kivikoski June 3rd
Coda is $99, but last week it was on sale for $49
( )stealth01 June 3rd
I think Nettuts should stay from this list of this and that. There are other sites that do that. Nettuts should do what it does best: awesome tuts.
( )Jeffrey Way June 3rd
I think it’s best to divide it up. We usually one post one of these kinds of articles each week. Personally, I like them.
( )John Williams June 3rd
I concur. These HELP me achieve the desired effects from the tutorials at a much quicker speed. Keep it at a 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 ratio. Tutorials are my favorite
Dj June 3rd
@jeff, Agree these are needed in probably the ratio you mentioned. I was a bit disappointed, however that the descriptions of each didn’t allow me to compare very well. Rather than just a mere list of possibilities and costs (important enough), it seems to me that the articles you subsidize in creating might better: first, describe “characteristics” of the product that we should be looking for and why they are important for us; then, the product descriptions should be easier and more meaningful by describing how it fits the characteristics already set forth. For example, even after spending time reading this article in full, I still do NOT know if paying money for any one of those listed is better than the free items and/or why. Just my 2 cents.
Ryan June 3rd
There are different tools of the trade and finding out the one that suits you the best can be very valuable.
I had no idea that expression web even existed before this and im definately going to look into because it looks pretty neat.
Keep up these articles. Oh and jeffrey, your awesome.
wayno007 June 3rd
I’m with Jeff, as long as it’s occasional posts, I don’t mind the break from pure tuts.
I’ve just started using Aptana, and find it an intuitive working environment.
( )Straderade June 3rd
I like list like this, they can truly help one when needing a QUICK & RELIABLE sources of information
So sick of seeing people complaining about quality post!
…I’d like to try Coda out!
( )Kevin Quillen June 3rd
Notepad++ is free for Windows and is a great editor and what Notepad should be.
( )BoltClock June 3rd
Isn’t Notepad++ covered in the editors article?
( )Jeffrey Way June 3rd
Yes, it is. Notepad++ isn’t an IDE.
BoltClock June 3rd
Woohoo, Aptana/Eclipse, the open source cross-platform IDE of my dreams
( )Pablo Augusto June 3rd
+1 here for Zend Studio with aptana plugin =)
( )Manoj Sachwani June 3rd
Usually I love text-wrangler I have tried CODA and the likes, some how, I like old school editors, viz.. text-wrangler for mac and edit plus for windows..
( )Jeffrey Way June 3rd
I prefer Coda and Netbeans.
( )Morten Najbjerg June 3rd
Netbeans is really great.
( )And by the way hhank you for your tip about the dev build. The UI has really been improved…making it a lot more fun to work with!
Dj June 3rd
@jeff … that was what I was describing above. Why do you prefer Coda and Netbeans. It seems that articles like these may benefit from having someone with lots of experience help us define the parameters of “niceness” that we should be looking for and how each product stacks up on those parameters so we can better tell if it will fit with what we need (whether we realize it or not). Again, that’s 2 cents (a grand total of 4cents now).
( )Meshach June 3rd
Jeffrey I am a Netbeans convert thanks to you.
( )Patrick Sweeney June 4th
I did not try Netbeans until a few weeks ago. I program in PHP, JS, and C++. I’m sorry I waited for so long to try it. It is fantastic at all of those languages, is pretty light on its feet as well. I HIGHLY recommend it!
( )Anthony Woods June 3rd
Nice round-up Andrew, I prefer to use Dreamweaver for IDE and i’ve used it my whole life, but some that have been mentioned is deffinetly worth trying out. I mainly use Visual Studio for ASP.NET!
( )Nicolae Vartolomei June 3rd
Big plus for zend and aptana
( )Buguletzu June 3rd
E-texteditor will blow your mind.
( )Martin Bean June 4th
Another e text editor user here! The Tab-fired snippets make it a dream to quickly develop complicated, bespoke web applications and sites in PHP for me.
( )spyesx June 3rd
Hi would like to show you Geany, an IDE for linux. http://www.geany.org/
I used a lot bluefish but this program is simplier and “new age”.
( )Prometee June 3rd
+1 for geany I use it for Web Dev and it’s a very simple and light IDE.
( )Daniel June 9th
I use Geany and it’s pretty versatile. It’s also available for Windows and supports a lot of plugins so if you don’t find a feature in the basic IDE you can extend it through these plugins.
( )Ethan June 3rd
Anytime I need to go to my IDE im Lovin Zend Studio/Eclipse. Sooo powerful
( )Nouman Saleem June 3rd
Hey Jeff how about a poll?
( )Ryan S June 3rd
Nice roundup.
Isn’t Coda $100? (https://www.panic.com/coda/buy.html)
( )Tommy M June 3rd
That’s what I was about to say.
( )Drazen Mokic June 3rd
At least i chumped up (correct spelling? ;/ ) with these ‘best of that and this’ postings but isn`t this much like this
http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/web-roundups/22-neat-code-editors-for-windows/
?
( )Jeffrey Way June 3rd
That’s the idea. This is a follow-up to that tutorial.
Only, this once focuses exclusively on IDEs.
( )mjw356 June 3rd
No Espresso for mac? I have tried it out and it seems pretty sweet. The only thing is that it doesn’t have versioning like coda and css edit. Made by the same guys who make CSS Edit though.
( )Jeffrey Way June 3rd
I agree. I would have expected the author to include Espresso in this list.
( )Muhammad Adnan June 3rd
Jeffrey Way , what about the new components category ?
when it is going to be launched ?
Andrew Burgess June 3rd
You’re right, I should have put Espresso in; I believe I looked at it, but for some reason I thought it was a text editor (I don’t have a Mac, so I couldn’t give it a try). Looking at it again, it’s obvious that it has a lot more than a text editor!
Isaac Seymour June 15th
What? You don’t have a mac? I’m a convert now after just 8 months of using it, I hardly touch my old PC, except for IE testing. Coda is Dreamweaver, just cleaner, simpler, lighter and generally better. I get the impression that Dreamweaver is just bloated and enormous, while Coda is so much more speedy and is just… wow! I’ve never really seen the point of being able to copy-paste stuff from Ps to Dw, when there’s slices and Save for Web, so integration really isn’t that great imho.
Isaac
Daniel Sellers June 3rd
I believe that Nvu is also available for Windows…
Used it a few times and won’t use it again. Its a decent WSIWYG but it has major issues with pages displaying correctly in IE 6… The code it produces is decent though.
( )jeff June 3rd
Coda was only $49 for a one-time two-day sale that happened to take place when the author wrote this. Its actual price is $99, or $85 if you have previously bought their FTP program (Transmit 3 – $29.95).
( )Helen June 3rd
Aptana makes you wasting hours checking your code. Actually, it’s just the localhost that sucks. That’s a pity.
( )Daft Viking June 3rd
I currently use Coda for most of my PHP / HTML work, and CSSEdit for CSS (obviously). I’ve tried Netbeans and Aptana – the biggest problem I had with those is the lack of soft word-wrap, which is a real pain when you have to work on longer blocks of text for display. I think I tried the Komodo IDE a while ago – don’t remember what I didn’t like about it (besides the price tag – I’m a bit of a cheapskate). Also tried Espresso, which didn’t make your list here – it felt a little too feature-light compared to Coda, at least for my use, but maybe I didn’t give it a fair trial (was really missing the SVN integration and split tabs).
I’m generally quite happy with Coda – love the split tabs, SVN integration, books, the fact that it doesn’t leave it’s own files all over the project like some other IDEs do. There are only a few features needed that would make it a nearly perfect IDE for me:
( )- code folding / collapsing
- better indication on tabs of the view (edit, preview, console, book, etc.)
- ability to detach a tab to a new window (for dual-monitor usage)
- some sort of MySQL console
Adrian June 3rd
Am I the only one that does NOT like the FTP built in to Coda? Otherwise though, I love it. Don’t need anything else.
( )Smyge June 3rd
Coda cost $99, not 49,5
( )Junni June 3rd
I’m currently using Eclipse on my Mac, which is great..but I’m eager to try out Aptana Studio. Code completion could be better in Eclipse for Mac.
( )Sam Oltz June 3rd
CSSEdit made it, but TextMate didn’t? Since when is CSSEdit an IDE? TextMate isn’t quite an IDE, but it’s more an IDE than CSSEdit.
( )Shiv Indap June 4th
Agree on that
( )Fausto June 3rd
Eclipse it’s the best IDE, and soon ZEND it’s gonna used as his primary IDE.
( )Philo June 3rd
CODA!
Using it for about 2 years I think, and in my opinion it is the best!
( )It has some great features and everything looks very nice.
Crysfel June 3rd
MyEclipse for the enterprise development is the best (Spring, hibernate, code generator, Web services and a lot more)
not sure how much for the license :s
( )DarthVinsus June 3rd
I begun with notepad!!! and the next IDE I used was Dreamweaver, a long time, but now I’m testing the netbeans for php and it work great, the integration with the cvs is great (I know, other IDEs has it too)
I have Windows u.u and I tested the PDT and Zend and they were too slow.
( )nico June 3rd
I really like Aptana! Installed it when I started learning Ruby On Rails.
( )But once it’s open, I’d never close it, because it really takes about 30-40 seconds to get started…
benr June 3rd
CSSEdit is €29.95 (about $39), not €59.95.
( )Jakub Florczyk June 3rd
Visual Studio family IDEs are great for developers but imo for typical webdesigner work is many more better tools.
( )Nate June 3rd
I use Windows. Aptana is by far my favorite.
( )Andi June 3rd
I use WeBuilder2008 for PHP development and Intellij IDEA for Java. Perfect for developers using Windows.
( )Dan Gayle June 3rd
What about Xcode? If you’re going to include Visual Studio, you should include Xcode. While you may not be able to do full on web development, you can do Dashboard and iPhone development, which both use html and javascript. If Apple were to add only a teeny bit more functionality, it would work great for general web development
( )James June 3rd
Glad to see phpDesigner =)
( )Wassim June 3rd
@everyone: the difference between aText-Editor and an IDE is actually the debugging capability. The IDE has it, the Text-Editor dont’t.
@Andrew Burgess: I don’t like the look of the Linux apps in the screenshots. Today’s newbies give more importance to the look and feel of the apps they might choose to use. If I’m a -native- Windows or Mac user who ignore what Linux looks like I’ll evidently -and wrongly- judge that Adobe is doing great not to release a Linux version of it’s CS just looking at the screenshots you choosed! Take a look at how Bluefish shines on Gnome 2.6 and Quanta (I see that you don’t know it) on KDE 4.
( )Andrew Burgess June 3rd
Thanks Wassim; having used Linux a bit (and planning to do so more in the future), I totally agree that Bluefish and Quanta can look absolutely stunning with the right tweaks in Linux distros. However, the screenshots in question are the product shots given by the creators of the software themselves; I wasn’t able to do them myself.
( )Lamin Barrow June 3rd
Thumbs up for Aptana and Visaul Studio. These are my personal favorites.
( )reg4c June 3rd
I think you chose probably the ugliest theme for my favorite IDE here: Bluefish.
( )Diego June 3rd
Is dreamweaver a IDE???….I don’t think so.
I use Eclipse…..just the best
( )Isaac Seymour June 15th
I think you could probably argue that it is. It certainly isn’t the kind of thing you might use for Java or desktop developement with all the debugging stuff like Eclipse, but it has Live Preview etc. which is arguably the equivalent for the web.
( )Brad June 3rd
I really enjoy using phpDesigner, am too much of an ameteur to use netbeans, Eclipse etc.
Like the others, phpDesigner takes longer than Firefox does to open. And I have a fast computer too.
You can buy phpDesigner for $75.00 instead of $105.00 if you get the 2 license deal instead of the 3. its the same software. Fortunately I bought it a long time ago and only paid $45.00 I think. It also has PEAR support.
I like the lists now and then, keeps everyone up on whats going on
( )Roderick June 3rd
It might sound strange for some of you, but I use Expression Web 2. It is incredibly fast, and has almost everything that every other IDE has.
(before it was called Front Page, a name that will cause nausea to any web-designer above 30 years old).
I know, it is a Microsoft product, but you have to remember that this is like their 10th try at it, it was time that they get it right…
I did try many IDE’s but I return to EW2 every time. It has the same functionality of Coda, it looks very good, the code auto complete feature is great, you could code directly in your PC with server services ON or just open the site online (a la Coda), it is intelligent enough to know your Doctype and check the code accordingly, the re-format code feature is amazing, no more alt-tabs or moving lines, the wrap feature is also very good. The CSS editor is exceptional, and drag a drop features are very cleaver, even its FTP program without any microsoft shared services installed in your server is amazingly clever.
Just try the demo, you won’t be disappointed.
Wow, I just realized that it looks that I work for Microsoft… I don’t!!!!
It is just that this app deserves a good point of view, they can’t be making bad software all the time, even if it was a fluke, they got it right this time.
Cheers.
Roderick.
( )Adrian Alvarez June 5th
I second expression web 2. I did a layout in css using floats, negative text-indent and background images, dreamweaver design view rendered it horribly, I was surprised to see that EW2 was able to render it about 90 % correct when just switching to design view to see how it looked. Also if your in college you could always download expression and visual studio for free via the dreamspark.
( )Juan C Rois September 3rd
LOL, love the joke about “front page”. I wonder if because of the fact that is a microsoft product, it would miracoulusly would fix all the display issues with IE and then ruin the display in all other browsers.
( )LOL
Japh June 3rd
Nice list!
I wish I could get Aptana Studio to work on Ubuntu… something seems to be up with my Java install, I think
( )Daquan Wright June 3rd
As someone who finally decided to work mainly with programming and databases, this will be most useful.
I’ve tried Apatan Studio but it takes forever to load on my laptop, I uninstalled it (twice).
I’ll have to do some experimenting, I’m a fan of light weight applications.
( )Isaac Seymour June 15th
“I’m a fan of light-weight applications”
*cough*Coda*cough*
PS. I don’t work for Panic
( )Yoosuf June 3rd
good stuff and nice arrangement!
( )DynamicGuru June 3rd
i used notepad till recently…But when i tried ou Komomdo i luved it, seams like Coda is much better…I ‘ll give it a try…
( )Thnx 4 the info
iPad June 3rd
What’s the big deal with Netbeans? I mean, what is the killer feature?
( )Phil McClure June 4th
Komodo Edit is free and a really great tool for Ruby on Rails development!
( )Marcello June 4th
Noone using PhpED??
( )+1 for it!
MorayWeb June 4th
I converted from Dreamweaver about a year ago when I realised I was paying for wysiwg features that I never actually used!
I have been using Aptana Studio for a while which is really neat if not a bit slow to load (there are a couple of FTP editting glitches as well – but I haven’t contacted them so I can’t complain!). Every now and then I try a couple of alternative editors/IDEs but I always seem to end up back on Aptana.
Especially like the plugins system – and the regular updates etc.
( )mike June 4th
NVU ist not longer develeoped.. last version is like from 2006.. the project is dead
( )Al June 4th
NVU has been superceded with Kompozer, still available and free, latest level is 0.7.10 which is what I use sometimes.
http://www.kompozer.net
( )Casper June 4th
yep thats really great for us, who using Linux for official work in office due to security reason, thanks buddy…
Casper
( )AJay17 June 4th
Nice post, Netbeans is my personal favorite.
( )FreewareMatter June 4th
I’m now using Eclipse and satisfy with this. Before, I used Aptana, Komodo, NetBeans, but I don’t like them very much.
( )Narshada June 4th
I switch between Coda and Espresso. Espresso has a few really nice features, like code folding and the element list highlights the whole element including any text, making it easier to comment out parts for testing/debugging, which I prefer over Coda’s way of doing it, which just puts the cursor at the beginning of the element. I like Coda’s ability to split windows though (not sure if that’s possible in Espresso as documentation/tutorials are a little thin on the ground right now.).
( )If I could merge them I’d have my ideal IDE.
Rhett June 4th
Where’s the love for Flux 2 by theescapers?
( )Gregory Kornblum June 4th
The best one in the list which covers pretty much every one of the top 10 or so languages is Eclipse. C#, PHP, Python, HTML/JS/CSS, Ruby on Rails, Java, C/C++, Hakell, etc… You just simply need to download the plugin which can be done within Eclipse.
Like Aptana for front-end, PHP, Ruby on Rails or Rails development? Just download it’s Eclipse plugin. You ask, “well hey, why would I download the plugin when I can just download the stand-alone?”. Simple, because you lose most of the ability to extend it as much as you would with Eclipse because it cuts out key dependencies most plugins need.
Although, yes it is hefty and the interface can feel a little clunky at times, but IDEs are supposed to be because they integrate many apps to provide a unified development interface.
Regardless, what is best for some in not best for all. But that’s my $0.02…
( )Dahnte Shantis June 4th
Coda is the only answer here..
( )lebisol June 4th
…another great tool for windows (perhaps not a full blown IDE) is WeBuilder http://www.blumentals.net/webuilder/
( )NetHawk June 5th
Yes it is a full blown IDE, and I use it ever since I startet developing with PHP.
( )Andy June 4th
The NVU screen shot does NOT show NVU but a newer version of Bluefish. The Bluefish screen shot shows an old version. And, like some others already said, the display manager which is responsible to draw the GUI elements on a Linux desktop is quite ugly. Bluefish on a KDE desktop looks much better.
( )Al June 4th
great article, still don’t know for sure what an “IDE” is, have no idea what those letters stand for.
perhaps someone can explain.
Al
( )Andrew Burgess June 4th
Sorry about that! IDE stands for “Integrated Development Environment.” For more information, you can check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment
( )Al June 4th
thanks Andrew
Al
Manji June 5th
Hi,
one question…
Can I Use Coda with 1 License on more than 1 Mac? My iMac and my MacBook for example.
( )Isaac Seymour June 15th
I think you can. One of the guys from Panic did a talk about Coda, and he said that they monitor serial keys, so they don’t mind if you register a couple of times, but if one serial starts going crazy they block it…
( )Roky June 5th
Hi,
you left out Zend Studio 5.5 which is also very popular due to projects, remove projects support, db, svn, debuging etc.
( )xerode June 5th
No love for FlashDevelop? http://www.flashdevelop.org/
I started using it because it’s far superior to the Flash IDE when it comes to writing ActionScript but it’s also good for writing (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript and XML with useful features like auto-completion and syntax highlighting etc. Most days I don’t need to open any other editor to get my work done!
Windows-only but it’s free and open source, which is nice.
( )umoor June 5th
Do you know Slickedit? Very nice and powerfull IDE. Maybe in a futur selection.
( )Banago June 5th
I use BlueFish – it’s great!
( )harryd June 5th
Love the post.
Polls section would be great.
My favorite “IDE” , book, magazine ….
HD
( )Nori Silverrage June 5th
How about Webuilder2008? That’s what I’m using and I think its positively awesome.
( )Gaurav June 5th
For PHP development i found phpDesigner the best IDE on windows. But for complete wed development PHP,CSS, Javascript etc Netbeans is the best of all.
( )Jorge Garifuna June 5th
Since I switched to the mac a few months ago, I’ve been using netbeans. I like most things about netbeans, but the only reason I keep looking for alternatives is because I find that netbeans consumes a great deal of memory (usually over 250MB in my case).
On windows I settled for a great PHP editor called PSPad (http://www.pspad.com). PSPad uses less than 30MB of memory and it has code completion, object navigator and many other nice features. Best of all, it’s FREE. If I can find something like PSPad for the mac, I would be very happy.
( )Craig June 8th
If I use Mac I go for Coda, But I am using PC, so dreamweaver is the best
It supports CSS, PHP, JS, FTB, which I use often, and it has the slickest and most customizable UI in the PC software market.
( )Pete June 8th
VS.Php is a great PHP editor for Windows. It extends Visual Studio to do PHP development.
http://www.jcxsoftware.com/
( )budd June 8th
IntelliJ Idea is probably the best Java IDE out there unfortantely its pricy, Net Beans can be a free alternative because it adopted many of Ideas features. For .NET developers I can advice ReSharper plugin (made by same company as Idea), which is a port of many of Ideas features to .Net platform
( )Carsten Knobloch June 9th
Thanks for your posting & greetings from Germany.
( )xun June 9th
so far, Coda serve me enough of everything.
( )balanza June 9th
I love NetBeans, but i guess it could be faster (and thus better) as it could be a standalone application instead of running under java virtual machine.
( )dwainehead June 9th
Komodo is my favortie ide, but I do use geany because it’s quick to load for qucik edits, and it is available on all platforms. Nvu is cross platform and it’s brother kompoZer http://kompozer.sourceforge.net/ but I wouldn’t call either one an “ide” like komodo eclipse or aptana, if that’s the case you need to start adding coffeecup html and hot dog, 2 of the probably oldest web development environements around today still. I think I started editing html on hot dog 1.0
after all we are talking nettuts not just php or js development….
( )Oliver Leitner June 9th
nice and interresting article, man.
allthough i have to say comparing vs2008 with phped and eclipse with nvu is kinda… there are worlds between them…
( )Matthew June 9th
Macrabbit CSSEdit 2 is only 29.95€ (about $42 US currently). Nice article however! Seeing some apps I used while I was completely on the Linux platform, although I now develop on Mac as well.
( )Jens June 12th
netbeans is the best IDE for mac. Take a look at the nightly built.
( )Klaus June 12th
coda is to expensive
( )Isaac Seymour June 15th
To be honest, look at some of the others. $99 is not that much compared to several hundred especially when it’s a great program which is updated frequently and has such great features that you could spend much more money on to get in a mixture of different programs.
( )Nori Silverrage July 10th
I agree.
( )Nori Silverrage July 10th
I meant that I agree with Isaac…
$99 isn’t very much if it saves you time and you are making money doing web design.
John June 17th
Surprised not to see JEdit (http://www.jedit.org) in there. I’ve used it for years and keep coming back to it after I try other things. It always used to be highly regarded. Doesn’t seem to be a great deal of activity with it at the moment, though.
( )Sathish July 4th
Thanks !! I just learn the difference between text editor and IDE.
I’ve been looking for cross platform IDEs. This is a great article.
Keep em coming.
( )Posicionamiento Valencia July 11th
I use bluefish on linux and I like it. But when I need something really hard, then I use Scite.
( )Manada July 16th
I am coding almost exclusively in Netbeans (Mac user). Its really hard to switch over to differnet IDE after you get used to it.
( )devlim July 20th
I like app based on Eclipse like netbean, flex builder and etc but the thing that make me dont like is the update is to slow(very slow) for all app that based on Eclipse
( )tonier August 6th
I’m used Komodo IDE for free, rarely tsWebEditor and sometimes if I need to do it quickly (without any start-ups process) I’ll used Notepad Plus-Plus or Notepad (yes I know it isn’t an IDE at all
).
Eclipse or Netbeans? I don’t know why, but I really dislike any JAVA IDE. It load slowly in my laptop; even if I really like tons of features that offered by them.
( )Yoosuf October 14th
Komodo IDE is not a Free Editor, Komodo Editor is the one Free…..
have more read….
( )http://blog.eyoosuf.com/resources/best-php-ide-and-editors-to-boost-up-your-day-to-day-coding/