Category: Review

Nusphere PHPEd 5.0 Review

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I am using PHPEd for couple of months and I’ve recently upgraded to their latest edition, 5.0. So I cant resist myself from writing a review of this product.

Best features
Latest edition of PHPEd (Version 5.0, build 5019) comes with many new exciting features, a splashing look-n-feel and improved debugging functionalities for professional PHP developers. PHPEd is available in the market for quite a long time and it is popular with handful of its useful features. The latest release of PHPEd improves their editor at next level where you will really find yourself flexible to develop PHP application. Let’s look at the best feature of PHPEd that always excites me.

Browser style code navigation
Splitable edit window
Fully Unicode compatible
Excellent debugging with DBG
Excellent Code-Insight facility
Embedded Firefox
Quick HTML Objects
DB Form wizard
Embedded NuSOAP Tool
Smart Full screen Coding
Integration with Shell Menu
Built in profiler

Drawbacks
Distribution of old libMySQL (Well, just because of new licensing scheme of MySQL)
Old Help Files
Absence of old code completion for some libraries

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Splittable Editing Window
This is one of the coolest features which come to my everyday use. By splitting the code window in two parts I can simultaneously work on two portion of the same file, keeping anyone as a reference.

Unicode compatibility
PHPEd comes with Unicode compatibility, this is one of the major featured I was looking in PHP editors for years. You can switch to your desired encoding anytime from tools menu->IDE Settings

Debugging with DBG
The debugging in PHPEd is cool with DBG as the backend debugger. You can set break points, watch variables and do other things with it.

Excellent code Navigation
Another feature I really liked is the different way of “code insight” – You can see the methods and variables inside your project. You can view all the classes, or all the methods under all the classes or even the methods from a single file. This thing helped a lot. And you can also search for any function inside your project using this code explorer tool.

Embedded Firefox
Yeah it’s true; it was so much fun having Firefox as the embedded browser. In PHPEd recent version you can use Firefox as embedded browser.

DB Form wizard
PHPEd can write PHP code to interact with your tables. It creates the HTML form and PHP code for CRUD operation.

Embedded support for NuSOAP
PHPEd has built-in support for NuSOAP library for creating soap servers and clients.

Smart Full screen Coding
That’s another thing I really like!! Hit the Alt+F10 and just coding!!! – Very nice feature for me!

Integration with Shell Menu
That’s another very useful feature I agree, it comes very handy to perform shell operations. PHPEd interacts with shell directly from the project explorer.

And beside these, yeah, code folding is also available.

Built in profiler
Yes, and that’s really nice. You can profile your application directly from inside PHPEd instead of setting up xdebug and WinCacheGrind. This is a very cool feature for PHP developers.


Drawbacks
Some drawbacks are there, too. One major problem that I face with PHPEd is that it has some problem with intellisense for some libraries like SPL and others. But they provide you some workaround to quick fix that. Another problem I found is old help files for Smarty, PHP and MySQL. But that won’t be a big problem if you have your own.

Packt Open Source CMS Award

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A new award scheme was launched 24th July by Packt Publishing offering a first
prize of $5,000 and the title of best Open Source Content Management System,
2006. Voted for by a panel of independent judges and visitors to
www.PacktPub.com , the award is designed to
recognize and reward outstanding achievement in a high quality and highly
competitive marketplace.

Packt Publishing is currently looking for people to nominate their
favourite Content Management System at www.PacktPub.com/award. The five
projects that receive the most public nominations will go through to a final
round of voting, with a panel of judges and votes from users deciding who
receives the $5,000 prize.

For more information about the Packt Open Source Content Management System
Prize, please visit: www.PacktPub.com/award

Now Its time to Bring some Great Open Source CMS Up.

VOX – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

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Yesterday I got an invitation from vox team, the new blog engine from six apart network and sined up there. What was my first impression about vox is “cool!!!”. I noticed many uptodate features. Beside those cool features I also feel lack of some necessary features as well. In this post I am going to figure out some good features, some missing features and some confusing features.

You can visit my vox blog at http://storyteller.vox.com

The Good
– Integration with Flickr, iStockPhoto, Photobucket
– Integration with Amazon. So that you can search for any item in amazon and add it in your blog. But there is no place to add amazon referral link or anything.
– Integration with YouTube.
– Personalized Collections
– A lot of colorful themes
– A web2.0 look and feel
– Use of AJAX in a smart way
– Use of ThickBoxes for adding content
– Easy navigation Panel
– Very good Neighbor Management
– Role based content display
– Thumbnail Management
– SpellChecker
– Strong Search Engine
– Powerfull Tagging
– Very good photo management
– SEO
– Choose Layout Style
– Draft Management

The Bad
– No way to add blogroll
– No way to add remote (hot linked) image
– Confusing Administration Panel and Collection Management, specially for Title Management and Sidebar object management.
– You cannot display collection objects in your frontpage but title of your collection
– No Password Protected post
– No customized comment spam management
– You cannot set external link for images
– Not sure about the size of uploaded contents. No information in appropriate place.
– Cannot Modify a part of the theme

The Ugly
– No Blogrolls (Whoa!!!, you can only connect to existing VOX members)
– No Hotlinking of Images
– It takes several hours to find out where I can change my blogs title. If it is available in my profile instead of themes section, it will be perfect.
– No HTML supported in personal details section.
– While commenting, you have to type HTML codes like <b> manually. Ni rich editor for commenting.
– No Keyboard shortcut while composing, like Ctrl+B
– I dont find any link for trackbacking to external post or from external post to my vox post.
– No public theme design documentation
– No post category, everything is tag based

So far this is my review on Vox. Vox seems extremely promising and it comes from Six apart who already have a huge blog engine development experience. Currently six aparts develops MovableType, Typepad, LiveJournal and Vox.