Web site designers - GETTING READY TO WORK WITH PHP EditPlus 2:
GETTING READY TO WORK WITH PHP EditPlus 2: Versatile text-only editor for Windows If you prefer to hew your code in a text-only environment, EditPlus 2 (www.editplus.com) is an excellent choice. It comes with a lot of built-in features, but you can extend the pro gram with custom syntax files. One set that I find particularly useful is www.editplus.com/ files/php504.zip. It specifies syntax coloring and automates many routine tasks. EditPlus 2 is available only for Windows. BBEdit and TextMate: Script editors for Mac OS X BBEdit (www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml) is the granddaddy of Mac text editors. It s excellent for working with XHTML. Although it has line numbering, syntax coloring, and a balance braces feature, it doesn t have any special PHP features. A much cheaper alternative is TextMate (http://macromates.com), which does have extensive sup port for PHP through a user-contributed bundle. Checking your scripts with a file comparison utility You re bound to make mistakes, particularly in the early stages. Often, you ll find that the problem is just a missing comma, semicolon, or quotation mark, but spotting the culprit can be the devil s own work in a page full of code. To help you with the learning process, you can download all the code for this book from www.friendsofed.com/downloads.html. Even so, comparing my files with yours can be time-consuming, not to mention tedious. File comparison utilities to the rescue! A file comparison utility automatically compares two files line by line, highlighting any dif ferences. Figure 2-2 shows the results of comparing two versions of the same file in the Windows program Beyond Compare, using the option to show just the differences. The section at the bottom of the screenshot shows the same line from each file one on top of the other, and highlights any differences. Using a file comparison utility with the download files will save you hours of fruitless searching. Figure 2-2. A file comparison utility makes light work of finding differences between your code and the download files.
If you are in need for cheap and reliable webhost to host your website, we recommend http web server services.