Trying the PhpStorm 2.0 IDE
27.04.11
What does JetBrains IDE PhpStorm 2.0 offer the professsional PHP Developer? We put it through its paces using the free 30-day trial.
I am a long term user of Eclipse PDT and most of the time it more or less does what I want, but this is more due to me learning its ways than any basic usability it might have. Even though Eclipse is an imperfect solution any IDE speeds up the development process such that it becomes worth using.
Is there a better way?
I decided to give JetBrain's PhpStorm 2.0 a try - for 30 days at least before the free-trial elapsed. This isn't a full and comprehensive review of PHP Storm but a look at how it helps with the day-to-day task of working with a PHP web site.
I will skip the usual download and install story because it did just that with no problems - just go to download and install it.
However don't expect to simply open the IDE and start writing PHP code. The reality of almost any sort of web development is that you have to set the system up to serve the content and at the moment only Microsoft with ASP.NET and Visual Studio provides a complete development environment out of the box. If you just want to create PHP scripts then you will need to install just the PHP interpreter but in most cases you will need to set up a web server as well, and so you might as well download and install a full LAMP or WAMP system. Basically you have to have a development system up and running so that you can browse PHP pages before you even think about using PhpStorm. Currently this is the way it is with all PHP IDEs and it will probably remain so.
