Tyree wrote:Which setup for debugging/IDE do you use/suggest?
The one which makes you most efficient.
At work i use
Eclipse PDT with Zend Server (CE).
For private programming I have used NetBeans a long time, now i have changed to
phpStorm which seems to be very sexy and quite fast for an full featured PHP IDE.
But i can highly recommend
Zend Studio which is much more than an improved version of Eclipse PDT. Especially the code completion in Zend Studio is genious. But Zend Studio is expensive.
Tyree wrote:My current editor of choice is Dreamweaver simply because it has a designer view (my other, larger hat). But, it pretty much sucks as a php editor.
I really don't like Dreamweaver. It is far away from being user friendly, especially the configuration to get an efficient development environment can be very frustrating.
Tyree wrote:But no designer view whatsoever. I'm always floored by that. Why can't I find a good IDE with a design view?
Simple answer: The view is depending to the Browser and many designers and developers test their sites on multiple different browsers.
I don't miss such a design view, because for that i have my Browsers which can be started with IDE's too by executing the script.
The only situation where a design view can be helpful is, if you don't know enough about HTML and CSS and want to use it as WYSIWYG-Editor. But that way you will not learn anything about good CSS styling, because all WYSIWYG-HTML Editors suck.
I prefer Firefox with sime extensions (FireBug, FirePHP, Web developer Toolbar, YSlow, Page Speed). With that combination i am most efficient.
I think you should try some of the combinations to find the best combination for yourself.