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Hello - I'm far enough into the book to discover other than the fact that IDEs are frequently mentioned in how to create or edit php files ("use text editor or IDE"), there is no explanation of what an IDE is, how they are used, which ones are useful, or which one you recommend for starters. After searching the Internet to find what one was, I have download three of them, to see which best suits my needs and my learning curve tolerance. Still sorting through them, but they already are more useful than a simple text editor, especially for a beginner such as myself. That said, would you mind answering those "missing" questions here? Being on a budget, I am exploring three free ones: Netbeans, Eclipse, and CodeLite Thanks, Dale

First, I'm in no way affiliated with the software that I'm about to mention. I simply discovered it when I was searching the web for JavaScript-specific IDE's. I just started reading "Modern Javascript" and I'm currently in the chapter that discusses the available text editors and IDEs - free and paid. I know at this point the book is more than 2 years old so I wanted to make the community here aware of a free IDE that's called "Brackets". It's open source and free for download and available for Macs and Windows. I see on their website they are now working on it to make it work on Linux/Unix OS environments. What I like about it is that: - it's written in JavaScript and it's specifically for JavaScript, HTML and CSS - it has a community that is active and they seem to have written quite a few plugins that are available for integration, including a PHP plugin and other languages - it comes with a built-in JSlint (checks out your JS code upon saving the file, letting you know what syntax mistakes you've made and how you've deviated from Strict JS). - it lets you see the changes you make in the code instantly as you work (without saving) in a Chrome browser window - it is very simple and easy to understand - no cluttered interface. It looks more like a hybrid between an IDE and a text editor - it has very cool editing features where for example you can edit an associated CSS file from within the HTML file you're currently working on (I'm yet to master this feature as I've never seen anything like this before and it's still a bit foreign to me) - it's very light and it loads immediately, starting where you previously left off. What I don't like: - it doesn't have an FTP/server connection of any kind. So, if you are working on a live site and want to see your changes on the web you still have to use another tool (like FileZilla for example) that allows you to FTP your altered files. Any way, I like it so here is their website and download link: http://brackets.io/ http://download.brackets.io/ By the way, there is another free IDE that I've been using for HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript - Webmatrix. It's by Windows, however it's not bloated like most of the stuff that MS puts out there. And, considering that it's free - and it supports version control (Git, etc), it has lots of plugins and it has a good support for JavaScript with color-marking the code, autocomplete and possibly other stuff that I haven't even discovered yet, I think it's worth giving a try. Oh, and it supports file FTP-ing, so no need for FileZilla. Here is their download link: http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/ My personal choice for a text editor (Windows) is Notepad++. It allows for file FTP. And the syntax is colored after saving the file. Larry Ullman mentioned this one in the book. Hope that helps the community here. Again, I am not affiliated with any of these. I just found them a short while ago, currently use them and like them so far. And they are free. Just like the author says, "it fits nicely with my frugality"

Hi everyone! What's the best IDE to develop the application with Yii framework? Thanks, Lida