Overview

Excited today, I’m going to try a new IDE for Windows: CodeLobster PHP Edition 4.5.1.

With almost 30 years experience in development, from the age of Commodore & QBasic to today’s VS, Eclipse, NetBeans, Vi, etc….  I’ve used them all to create some code (even  NotePad). Sometimes, I am using more then one editor at once!

 

CodeLobster PHP Edition

Code Lobster is a “Free portable IDE for PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript development”. 

You can pay a bit and get the proffesional version of CodeLobster which I’ll review below.

Starting developing on PHP, probably you often face the problem which IDE to choose for Windows OS. Whereas most companies sell it at high price (100-500$), we offer multifunctional portable IDE FREE absolutely with all standard features: PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript highlighting, advanced PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript autocomplete, Powerful PHP debugger, Context and Dynamic Help, Code Validator, SQL manager and much more… Codelobster PHP Edition streamlines and simplifies php development process. You don’t need to keep in mind names of functions, arguments, tags and their attributes; methods etc – we’ve implemented all these for you in the autocomplete feature for PHP, HTML, JavaScript and even CSS. Also, you can always get necessary help information by F1 or using special Help control. Internal free PHP Debugger allows validating code locally. It automatically detects your current server settings and configures corresponding files in order to let you use the Debugger.

 

Free Download

You need to download only one file, no need for seperate installation for the free and proffesional editions. if you decide to upgrade to full installation, just enter your proffesional version serial instead.

Only 54.2MB (Visual Studio is: x, Eclipse is: Y for example)

 

Portable version too

You can install the software in Standard or Portable version from the same installation.

Very handy if you want to save your IDE configured along with your project on portable USB Device.

 

Zen-Coding

CodeLobster is the first IDE I met, which offers Zen-Coding out-of-the-box. VERY HANDY!

 

Workspace

First screen you will see after installation should look like this: no pop-ups, no tips. clean design. clean and elegant.

For anybody who worked with any IDE before, working with CodeLobster will be quick and easy. You should test it! try with simple HTML or PHP pages. You’ll find that it may be your prefereable editor for such files.

By default, CodeLobster will set the .PHP, ..XML, .XSL, .JS, ..MODULE, .PHP5, .INC & .CSS file-types to itself in the setup process. you can set to .html, .htm, .txt too.

With a lot of themes! and 5 other languages beside english

Viewing HTML files is easy and simple (Shortcode: F2), if you want to code with PHP, you’ll need to run your local WAMP server with PHP support for debug.

 

 Proffesional version

Now most sites are developed using various CMS and frameworks. For their usage we propose more advanced Professional version.

As mentioned in codelobster website, most of today’s websites are developed using various CMS and frameworks, most notably WordPress (with over 60% of the market share as of the time of writing this article).

By default, CodeLobster will install the included plugin which need the Proffesional serial to activate:

•  CakePHP plug-in
•  CodeIgniter plug-in
•  Drupal plug-in
•  Facebook plug-in
•  JQuery plug-in
•  Joomla plug-in
•  Smarty plug-in
•  Symfony plug-in
•  WordPress plug-in
•  Yii plug-in
•  SQL manager.

Working with those plugins requires you to install & configure your local WAMP server, then you’ll enjoy the wonderful tools CodeLobster gives you such as AutoCompletion for your WordPress coding!

If your CMSs are hosted on remote linux based VPS (like me), working with those plugins will require you to setup local web server and create full local copy of your files locally.

You CAN use the build-in FTP explorer to edit files directly on your web-server, but you’ll not get to use feautures such as the Auto-Completion.

 

 

Summary

Great Free tool! Must-have in every web developer tool-box!

The IDE loads so fast! that it already made to the top of my list as my preferred Windows editor for  HTML/CSS/JSI

If you are delveloping in PHP on windows, and/or you run your CMS runs on local WAMP machine – This is your IDE!! , you can use many great features and comfort CodeLobster gives you! In that case, If you need some of the plugins – Go for it! they will save you lot of time and will help you alot, , for a very fair price, you should Order it.