Some of the try before you buy contenders included PhpStorm 7.13 and PHPDesigner 8.1.2.

My problem was part technology and part learning what I wanted to do in NetBeans which was to initiate the debugging session from within my web browser without having to modify the URL.Īlthough both of these are free, I would not have minded paying for an IDE for PHP development since I do a fair amount of this for a living. It did take me a little to figure out the XDEBUG integration but I got it to work exactly as I expected. NetBeans 8 - Way better user interface than Eclipse in my opinion.I'm not sure if it is even being developed anymore. PDT isn't even listed in their main list of downloads. Although I didn't try Eclipse (PDT), I did try Aptana which is built on Eclipse but I don't want to have to struggle to figure out the user interface… I want to code! Way too much work to try and find information. While I'm sure it's a fine product, the website is ancient and not user friendly. Eclipse (PDT) 3.5 - Didn't bother trying it.

There are many great IDE's out there and everyone will have their favourite. I compared features of 9 different IDE's for PHP development and reading tons of reviews. After spending way more time that I should like to admit trying to get XDEBUG to work with Notepad++ using the DBGp plugin in anything but the simplest of projects, I decided to look for an alternative.

Download xdebug phpstorm windows