Sun has released version 6.5 of its IDE, NetBeans--the first stable version of NetBeans to include support for PHP coding.

NetBeans is the first IDE I've used and I've been using the development versions for PHP coding for a number of months now. Prior to NetBeans I had only used DreamWeaver and Notepad++.

Like I said, I had never used an IDE, I don't know how it compares to Eclipse, but the extense of code-hinting and completion, compared with DreamWeaver, was a true surprise to me considering its a free program. It provides code hinting and completion on all PHP5 methods, as well as functions, classes and methods you define yourself. It also tracks all your variables, even across include files. These sorts of features mean a lot fewer mistakes and really speed up my coding.

NetBeans goes even further than code completion by highlighting errors in your code, such as mismatched braces, missing function parameters, and warnings such as defining a variable in an if statement when you may have intended to do a comparison. It doesn't highlight all errors that would cause your code to fail, but it certainly stops you making those annoying mistakes that you don't spot as you code.

You can even use NetBeans to debug a website if you have XDebug module installed on PHP. It works just like debugging a normally desktop application where you can set break points in your code, watch variables and jump in out of functions. Unfortunately this doesn't work so well with my main project which has a rather unique Apache/PHP configuration as it stops on the same include file multiple times as the page loads. But for most other people it works brilliantly.

In my new employment we use Subversion which, makes NetBeans even more valuable since it has native support for Subversion and other version control systems. NetBeans will highlight new, changed and deleted lines of code and you can quickly view and restore these changes. It's great to be able to identify what I've changed in a file the next day when I may have otherwise forgotten.

If you do any PHP coding at all I highly recommend you install NetBeans--it makes coding so much easier.