For website creation these days, a good software editor (besides the simple ones) is required. There are many commercial products for this purpose, but if we can get one for free, why not?
Well, if you care to look, there are programs that are free, and yet highly functional and useful at the same time, one of which is Codelobster PHP Edition, a free PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript editor (IDE).
So what makes Codelobster better than other similar web editor programs? It has many features such as:
1) All code highlights which are grouped together according to their type, can be highlighted. This also includes mixed code. In other words, areas of HTML will be highlighted as HTML, PHP as PHP, and Javascript as Javascript, all in the same file. You can also choose from different color schemes, including popular IDEs.
2) Powerful autocompletion for HTML, PHP, CSS and Javascript, including HTML5 and CSS3.
3) HTML/CSS inspector that resembles a type of Firebug, which allows one to easily correlate the selected elements of the page with a code and proper style.
4) Context help on all supported languages. By pressing the F1 key, the page with detailed descriptions for current tags, attributes, or functions, will be opened.
5) PHP debugger. PHP debugger allows one to execute PHP scripts incrementally, while watching the values of all variables in every line.
6) SQL manager allows one to produce all necessary actions with a database – to add, delete, edit a structure and records in tables, to export data, and execute SQL queries. Highlighting and autocompletion works for SQL files also.
7) Support of FTP allows you to work straight with a remote server and to do all necessary changes with files;
8) The portable option allows you to use the editor without any preliminary installation, on any computer. This makes it highly portable for demonstrations.
9) Other useful utilities: pair highlighting, possibility of blocks selection, collapsing, tooltips, navigation on descriptions of functions and included files at withholding of the CTRL key, viewing of structure of files and project, preview in a browser, book-marks, and all the other standard possibilities for work with a code.
Codelobster also has optional plugins that enable you to work with:
1) CMS: Drupal, Joomla
2) PHP frameworks: CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Symfony, Yii
3) JavaScript library: JQuery
4) WordPress blogging engine
5) Smarty template engine
Codelobster is developed by Codelobster Software, and comes in several languages, such as English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It can run on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
