Jakob Nielsen is out to make the web more “usable.” His latest book, “Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed” co-authored with Marie Tahir, takes on the most important page of your site, the homepage. The homepage of a web site is critical, not just because Neilson says so, but because you never get a second chance to make a first impression. The authors present 113 homepage usability
guidelines that will make your site easier to use, and then they apply them mercilessly to 50 popular sites.

The preface includes a short description of the role of the homepage followed by some of the common metaphors. The authors explain why a home page could be compared with a magazine cover, a building lobby and a table of contents in a book. They state that since a site review by Nielsen’s group typically costs $10,000, the book’s value is over $500,000. If Nielsen does charge $10k for a homepage review, the sites that are reviewed have saved a lot of money.

The first chapter in the book covers the 113 homepage guidelines. The guidelines are categorized into groups such as “Communicating the Site’s Purpose” and “Navigation.” The guidelines are well presented and easy to understand. Some of the tips I like include:

• Include a “Privacy Policy” link - This is critical when gathering any
  personally identifiable information.
  
• “Spell out abbreviations in the first instance.” I have seen many
  times where companies use acronyms without definition.
  
• “Don’t use generic instructions, such as “Click Here” as a link name.” The authors explain how using meaningful text in links tell users what they will get when they click on the link.
  
• “Input boxes should be wide enough for users to see and edit standard
  queries on the site.” I think designers generally put the look over the function. If the typical user would enter 10 characters, make sure the input box can handle same without having to scroll.
  
• “Let users choose whether they want to see an animated intro to your
  site.” I agree 100%, a user should be able to select whether they want to enter the site immediately or go through the intro first.

The second chapter takes the principles previously defined and applies them to 50 top web sites. Sites such as FedEx, Accenture, Amazon, CNN, DirecTV, Victoria Secret and others get the full treatment. Each homepage has 4 pages in the book devoted to it.

The first is a screenshot, taken on a PC using Internet Explorer. The next page gives a description and review of the homepage. Also included on this second page, is a very useful pie chart showing the “Breakdown of Screen Real Estate.” The categories include: Self promotional, Filler, Unused, Advertising & sponsorship, Content of interest, Navigation, Welcome & site identity, and Operating System & browser controls. A small screenshot is very useful to see the category breakdown. I am not sure why they included the “Operating system and browser controls” category as this is useless since everyone has a different setup. If I took the screenshots using Netscape running on my Mac, that percentage would be different. On the other hand, this category is always the same 19% which allows the other categories to be accurately represented.

The third and fourth pages of each review pick apart the page piece-by-piece. It seems every site has around twenty items that the authors feel should be corrected.

At the end of the book is an appendix including a small category-colored screenshot from the sites that were reviewed. This allows you to compare the sites at a macro level. Also included are other across-the-board reviewed site elements such as logos, search features, ahopping carts
and popups.

I may not agree with everything Nielsen says, but “Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed” provides good background for further discussion. It seems to be geared more towards the entry-level and intermediate front-end designers and developers. At some point in the near future, my design and development team at work will read this book, at a minimum, for the guidelines and principles. A co-worker of mine pointed out that with all of Nielsen’s usability talk, the book’s physical size is somewhat un-usable. I believe this book is a worthwile purchase for anyone in the web field.

Usually I am quite skeptical when it comes to the types of books that claim to “teach you something in 24 hours”. SAMS Publishing hired a guru-like author to write this book. Kynn Bartlett is a participant in the W3C technical working group (http://www.w3c.org) and the infamous HTML Writers Guild.

“Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours”, starts off with the basics of CSS scripting. The book discusses what Cascading Style Sheets are, how they are supported among the different browsers (and platforms) and how they are used with HTML.

Part I is a general introduction to CSS. Part II begins by explaining the CSS Box Model and inheriting properties of CSS classes (”The Core Principles of CSS”). Part III continues with styling text, backgrounds, lists, tables and general page layout and webdesign using Cascading Style Sheets.

Once you have completed Part III, you have spent a total of 18 hours learning CSS. That sounds like learning at the speed of light, but trust me with this book, it’s very possible.

Having only six hours left to master CSS you continue with Part IV, which covers CSS and printing, Internationalization, user interface, CSS and JavaScript and last but not least, CSS and XML.

The speed the author proposes that you learn and comprehend is reasonable. CSS is not a killer to learn, unlike a real programming language - such as C++ or Java. And remember, although the title states that the book will teach you CSS in 24 hours, it does not mean, that you take the 24 hour tour non-stop.

Reading each chapter I really began to like Bartlett’s style. Every item in the book is explained in brief but also has nice depth, always very straight forward and clear. I especially liked how the author added little boxes to each chaper that tell you workarounds, browser specific issues or how to debug your code - if what you learned so far doesn’t work.

Last but not least, the book features Part V - the apendix. The apendix covers “How to Read W3C Recommendations”, “Replacing Presentational HTML with CSS” and the “Glossary”.

Since I knew almost all the CSS techniques that Bartlett talked about in the preceeding chapters, “Replacing Presentational HTML with CSS” became my favorite and it’s probably the chapter all you codewarriors out there will love. It features a table that shows the HTML tag and the equivalent in CSS, so all that is left to do is to run “search’n'replace” with your favorite editor across your HTML files and violá - done!

As the name suggests “Teach Yourself CSS in 24 Hours” is a book for the beginner, not for intermediate and by far not for the advanced. Kynn Bartlett talks about everything you need to know about writing Cascading Style Sheets. You do not have to be a computer junkie or freak to understand what he is telling you.

If you worked with CSS before and if you are quite comfortable with it, you might look elsewhere for a more advanced CSS reference book.

Almost every web developer uses PHP and MySQL these days. Because it is such a popular combination, most web users think that all dynamic sites utilize both. Since it is not the only choice, I picked up this book as a reference for integrating PHP and MySQL code with JSP pages (SAP connector) for a client. Since this book follows the popular step-by-step scheme, we’ll start from the beginning.

The author of the book, James Turner, begins with the fundamentals of Java Server Pages (JSP). He goes into detail on JDBC, Tomcat and basic database interaction. Later he explains JavaBeans and discusses Servlets and the features and functionality they can add to JSP.

The next two parts focus on a sample application. The reader is walked through the entire process of creating an online store with category and product administration, shopping carts, checkout, order steps. It is like, “Build your own Amazon in 30 days!,” step by step. What I really liked about the sample application is that Turner did not just focus on the technical parts, he also goes into detail on functional specs and takes us with him on the long journey of software development up through the final stages of implementation.

Part IV, labeled “Advanced JSP Topics” brings us up-to-date on XML, LDAP, the Struts Application Framework, Enterprise JavaBeans and finally, Security, Load Balancing, Failover and more. The latter is pretty interesting because the author explains topics such as SSL implementation and integrating Tomcat with the Apache webserver.

Now what did I expect from the book? Overall, I am semi-pleased with the coverage. I expected at least a chapter or two on integrating JSPs with other technologies (”Hello, PHP calling!”). The author also failed to discuss alternatives on this sector. Apache’s Jakarta Turbine classes are not the only choice for developers. The Java-world offers countless ways (Slightly exaggerated!) to go into JSP and MySQL development. There are alternatives, such as the MySQL Connector/J or Resin JDBC engine. Having said that, the book is a bit shortsighted since it fails to at least mention all the tools that are made available to Java and JSP developers.

Definitively one the books fortes is the very comprehensive appendix and its walkthroughs on installing JDK, Ant, Tomcat and MySQL. Everything you need to get a fully functional testbed up and running on your computer at home or on a server anywhere else - on Windows or Linux/Unix. Every newbie will like this part! I also liked the discussions on LDAP and XML, although I feel that the reader is better off with an additional book on either topic. Certainly a nice addition to the book though.

If you peruse the last few chapters of the book, is “just” a step by step tutorial to building a program according to Mr. Turner’s scheme. Rather than a comprehensive overview of all available options that a developer might want to read about when spending US$40 on this book. Browsing some newsgroups I also found people who told me about errors in the sample source code provided.

Overall, not a very good impression. I am a beginner and I therefore can not recommend this book to other beginners. Experienced JSP coders will find it a tad boring since all the coding is rather simple and intermediate. Your money would be better spent elsewhere.

Book Description

Are you new to digital photography and image editing software? This dazzling, full-color book provides a fun, practical introduction to photo-editing with Photoshop Elements for both home and business users — and anyone who wants to jump right in and enhance their images. Discover forty valuable techniques and hundreds of creativity-inspiring images, plus a CD filled with images for practice and a tryout version of Photoshop Elements 2 — all at an exceptional price. You’ll learn to use the File Browser, change image size, enhance faces, fix blurry images, correct under- and overexposed images, turn photos from color to black-and-white, remove people and objects from photos, add special effects, and much more. Brought to you by Sybex and YoungJin.com, a leading South Korean book publisher founded in 1987. Youngjin.com is known for brilliant graphics and digital photography books, featuring exceptionally stylish designs and high-quality images.

From the Back Cover

Are you new to digital photography and image editing software? This dazzling, full-color book provides a fun, practical introduction to photo-editing with Photoshop Elements for both home and business users’ and anyone who wants to jump right in and enhance their images. Discover forty valuable techniques and hundreds of creativity-inspiring images, plus a CD filled with images for practice and a tryout version of Photoshop Elements, all at an exceptional price. You’ll learn to use the File Browser, change image size, enhance faces, fix blurry images, correct under- and overexposed images, turn photos from color to black-and-white, remove people and objects from photos, add special effects, and much more.

Brought to you by Sybex and YoungJin.com, a leading South Korean book publisher founded in 1987. Youngjin.com is known for brilliant graphics and digital photography books, featuring exceptionally stylish designs and high-quality images.

40 Digital Photo Retouching Techniques will show you how to:

• Use Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0
• Correct lighting and contrast
• Turn color photos into sepia-toned or black-and-white images
• Color black-and-white photos
• Remove red eye, eliminate blemishes, and enhance facial features
• Create studio backgrounds and professional picture packages
• Clean-up, combine, and resize images
• Create reflections and text effects
• Whip up photographic and other special effects
• Make a web banner
• Create a photo gallery for the web
• And more!

Scott Kelby is back with this new digital photography book, “The Adobe Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers.” Everyone who knows Photoshop knows Scott. I have attended a few seminars and conventions where he was one of the speakers. The back cover describes the book as, “His (Scott) easygoing, plain English style of teaching makes Photoshop fun.” I received this book and have found myself taking digital photos more than ever just to play with Scott’s techniques!

The first two chapters of the book deal with file browser essentials. I learned a lot from this section about how to use the file browser. Probably the coolest thing I learned was how to create digital contact sheets for my digital photo cds. These sheets allow you to print a contact sheet showing what is on the cd. No more will you have to load 10 CD’s to find the picture of Aunt Ida.

The next three chapters deal with basic photo elements, namely cropping, resizing, image problems and color correction. Scott demonstrates how to take small photos and make poster-sized prints out of them. Ok, here is my favorite trick from the book, fixing underexposed pictures. Scott shows a before picture where you can barely tell what is in the picture. After applying his techniques, you can clearly tell what is in the picture and no one is the wiser. The “Color Me Badd” section first explains why the default color space is no longer the proper one to select and why changing this before making any color edits is critical.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 handle techniques for masking photos, retouching portraits, and sculpting. I personally like the tip on how to extract people from their background. This tip allowed me to “change” the background of an image I was in. How many of you have taken pictures with the family only to look at them and realize you have dark circles under your eyes? Scott explains how to remove the dark circles and any other hangover attributes. Here is one tip for all the women (ok and men), removing love handles. Take out excess bulge digitally. I tested this out, but sadly the digital removal does not automatically lead to real-life removal.

Special effects and grayscale are pretty cool too. Scott shows how to “replace the sky.” Another technique I am glad to see in the book is, “Stiching Panoramas Together.” This allows you to take multiple panoramic pictures and stich them together for an awesome huge image. The last of the techniques in the book address professional sharpening techniques. From basic sharpening to extreme edge sharpening, these techniques should be attempted once the previous chapters in the book have been mastered.

The last chapter in the book is the section I think should be called, “protect yourself and get paid.” This chapter shows you how to watermark your images should you need to prove anything to Judge Judy. Scott shows you how to properly show your work to your clients online, how to create picture package layouts and how to send a portfolio presentation to a client. These techniques can also be used for non-business events, i.e. showing your family your pictures.

The first line in this book is, “I had no intentions of writing this book.” I certainly am glad that Scott did because I believe he has written the best digital photography book on the market today. The only drawback is that most of these techniques require Photoshop CS and not everyone has made the upgrade as of yet.

Although Flash MX 2004 was released only a couple of weeks ago, this book is rarely an oldie, more a goldie. I think it’s also the most recent in O’Reilly’s series of books about ActionScript. The author, Colin Moock, has done an outstanding job of very clearly explaining the principals of ActionScripting and is easy to understand for the beginner and the intermediate.

Colin starts off by explaining variables and data types, the two fundamentals of programming (or scripting). He continues to discuss topics, such as operators, statements, loops, functions, event handling, movie clips and a lot more. One of my favorite chapters was about objects and classes, and movie clips. Colin has a remarkable style of writing that makes it both interesting and entertaining. Which always makes me wonder how O’Reilly scouts such talented authors for all the different topics that they have covered with their titles so far.

When I started working with Flash, one of the most difficult things to understand was the structure of a Flash file. Layers, Timelines, and paths of nested movieclips and buttons. This book is certainly what I longed for two years ago, when I was struggeling. Too bad I only discovered it now. Having mastered the basics with this book, you will find yourself soon advancing to topics, such as object oriented scripting and classes, which is why ActionScript is so extremely useful even for people who usually call the frontend (of a project) their fortay.

Since I have read more than one book on different programming and scripting languages, one should not take for granted that example code always works. I have even had books where none of the files on the CD-ROM that came with the book worked. Keeping in mind that most of those books cost between 40 and 50 USD, you can imagine one’s mood when you discover such negligence. Let me say that I did not try every piece of code that came with this book, but virtually every example code I tried worked flawlessly; I think the editors have done a outstanding job.

Only praise? Well no! It is really a pity that this book does not discuss code debugging in Flash. For example, the very neat remote debugger that has been introduced in Flash. So far this is the only downside I discovered and because I think debugging is one of the most important things, when you learn a new language, I took a star off the rating to reflect this.

I am in the target audience for this book. I have a tiny bit of knowledge about PHP. My MySQL knowledge is stronger as I am pretty good at queries in the basic sense but things like inner/outer joins just confuse the heck out of me.

This is one of the best developer books I have read to-date. The way the material is presented is easy to understand and concise. It almost feels like the authors were sitting around a table with me actually walking me through the examples. It did not feel “super-techy”, which is a good thing when you are trying to learn something new.

Chapters 1-6 take you through basic orientation, the installation of Apache, PHP and MySQL, followed by an intro to PHP statements.

Chapters 7-9 introduce database concepts and step you through getting PHP to talk to MySQL.

Chapters 10-17 begin the process of creating forms and other components of Web sites and applications following all the way through to integrating some sample applications.

While this book is very basic, meaning you will be able to run basic functions, and database connections, it is a good foundation to build upon. What I like is that now I have a clear understanding of PHP terminology for giving direction to programmers that I work with. I also now understand the basics of database query joins which for me was worth the purchase price alone.

Many developers I work with talk about PEAR and this book has a short chapter on using PEAR in your development to get PHP to talk to MySQL.

This book will wet your appetite to want to learn more about PHP and MySQL.

Product Rating:

Company:
O’Reilly

Requirements:
Ability to read?

Pricing:
$29.99

Reviewed by:
Allen

Competition:
n/a

Pros:
Language is easy to understand even for non-technical folks.

Cons:
For beginners, pros look elsewhere.

Bottom Line:
A good read for the newbie to PHP and MySQL development.

In the past few months we’ve all seen the rise of WYSIWYG editors, allowing everyone and anyone to create a web page in a fast, efficient manner. However, there are those among us, myself included, that would much rather edit the HTML source directly. Many of the new editors like Evrsoft’s FirstPage and Allaire’s Homesite that are designed to be pure-HTML editors have proofing tools built-in, and while I personally don’t celebrate Notepad, I know a large number of you out there that do.

While the custom-built products out there have integrated tools to tell you when you’ve spelled a tag name wrong, and when you’ve used an invalid attribute, or when you give a text value to a Boolean attribute, and some even have tools to automatically fix improperly nested tags. Notepad, and even some of the more text-based editors, lack these features. The answer, my friends, is the CSE HTML Validator from AI Internet Solutions. This amazing little package (2.4 megs is little in my book) is capable of running through an HTML file, and alerting you of invalid tags, misspelled tags, invalid attributes, missing quotation marks, missing or extra closing tags, use of extended characters in HTML, and even possible cross-browser issues!

This program was ridiculously easy to setup and get started. I soon found that the program not only serves as a validator, but also as an HTML editor that is like Notepad on steroids. It has color coding of different aspects of the document, numbered line, optional split view, a resource tab, full screen mode, and the ability to easily preview the page with an external browser. It also has the ability to place bookmarks within a document, and the option to create batch files (remember DOS?) to automate the validation process.

When I went to validate a document, the speed was incredible. In under a second, it had developed a list of errors, determined the structural layout of the document, made recommendations about tags that are depreciated in HTML 4.0, and even reminded me that our friends using text-only browsers appreciate the use of the ALT attribute for images. It also compiled a list of all links in a document, and gives you access to two independent scratch pads so that you can make notes about your document that won’t be saved as comments.

Another feature that I found useful was the structural tab that is generated during validation. This tab not only shows you what the nesting order of a document is, it also gives you quick access to the percentage of times that you forgot to close a given tag.

Among the two best features that CSE HTML Validator offers are line highlighting, and versatility of validation. Whenever you run the validator, it will automatically mark the lines that contain errors by changing the background color of the line. As for the versatility of the editor, I must say that I was amazed when I learned that this program not only checks for HTML problems, but for problems in C++, Perl, Delphi, Java, VBScript, and SQL too. Any one of these alone is worth the price tag of $49.95 in my book!

Overall, I must say that I was more than impressed; I was blown away! The speed and ease of use of this program are absolutely amazing. I challenge you, for the money, to find a better HTML validator. It will save you hours, over the course of a week, in development time, by allowing you to forget about the mundane and monotonous task of going through HTML files searching for that proverbial error that prevents the page from displaying properly.

MySQL has become the defacto choice for a lot of Internet Service Providers when it comes to supplying their customers with a SQL database. The combination of PHP and MySQL has become quite popular among web developers over the last few years. For many, it?s the SQL of choice.

If you have worked with MySQL, you have probably heard of phpMyAdmin. Being one of the most often downloaded tools from Sourceforge (http://phpmyadmin.sourceforge.org), phpMyAdmin is a script written in PHP (duh!) for database management, such as MySQL users administration and types of database access. Although this is one of my favorite tools when it comes to working with MySQL databases, the fact that it was written in PHP bears certain limitations, especially when it comes to large databases.

Last evening we needed to move the database that the HTMLCenter?s forum uses to another server. Creating the export file was easy. I logged onto the shell of the server and told mysql to give me a mysqldump which came out to be 2.55 MB in size. Now the size causes certain problems. Since PHP is designed to run only a certain amount of time (standard: 30 seconds) and consume only a certain amount of memory (RAM) (standard: 8 MB) (both settings are set in the php.ini file), you either have to split the sql dump into smaller packages and import each one using phpMyAdmin, or you might be lucky and can import it through the shell.

Now the problems that arose with the account on the new server were: 1. no shell access and 2. phpMyAdmin can not input mysqldumps of that size ? because it had been configured to do so (performance and security issues). The ISP told us that we could connect remotely (from home or office) to the mysql server and that we could use a program such as MS Access to do the import. Since I don?t own a copy of Access I went ahead from here with the EMS MySQL Manager.

After I installed the package on my Windows 2000 desktop, I fired it up. Now the first thing that I learned from reading the ?Tip of the Day? was that I had to register a database with the program so I could connect to it. So I clicked File then Register Database and put in all parameters (host, user, password, database and port), tried the test connect and it worked!

The interface of the EMS MySQL Manager looks very similar to Microsoft Office and XP.. The program is very flat-looking and also very slow in my opinion. If you click around too fast, there is a clear delay in everything you do. That might be because my computer is ?just? an Athlon 600 with 256 MB RAM, but that should be sufficient for this program to run. The interface is very easy to get used to and if you are familiar with Microsoft Office and other Microsoft applications, you will feel at home in no time.

Anyway, once I connect to the database through the database explorer with a couple clicks left and right, I was able to browse through tables and check field properties, indexes and contens of the MySQL database online. Very straight forward, very neat looking. Information just where you want it.

Browsing around the program, I noticed that the EMS MySQL Manager comes with a fully functional database manager. So assuming that you have root access on the MySQL server you are connected to, and assuming that you set it up to allow remote connections, you can create and delete databases, create tables, flush the database, grant access to users, basically do just about anything you can do on a MySQL server with one or two clicks.

I was clicking around when I found a ?SQL Script? option. I went into the dialog, chose the file I had saved the database dump from my old MySQL server to and hit the ?Play button?, or ?Run?. And then the odyssey started, executing query one of 30252.

It worked, but it took quite a long time. Obviously, you won?t win a speed contest with the EMS MySQL Manager, it works slowly but surely. Assuming that you have access to the mysql command on the prompt, you would do such an import about 20 times faster, but if you are not familiar with that or ? as in our case ? you do not have access to it; this program is definitely one way to do it. One possible reason for the low speed might be my connection to the MySQL database server.

Overall, I am very pleased with the results that were obtained and the way the program completed the work. The only negative thing I noticed about the program was when temporarily my connection to the database server went down, it kept executing queries and I had to redo thos four or five queries later on. Since the program errored and obviously knew what was going on, a pause would have been more appropriate.

If you are interested in trying out EMS MySQL Manager there is a trial version of the program and I highly recommend that you try it. The download is only around 5 MB and the documentation online promises that you will get a fully functional trial version for 30 days.

There is nothing to lose by giving it a try, only ease in the workflow for you to gain. There are professional, lite and developer bundles available, the first two coming in packages of single (starting at $65) and site licenses (starting at $495). Please see the website for more detailed information about that.

The other option is tough. Installing an Apache webserver and a PHP binary on your desktop is not too hard in order to get phpMyAdmin to do all your work ? and did I mention that it?s free? However if you are not a tech-user, the EMS MySQL Manager is just what you are looking for.

I have been looking for a real PHP IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Recently, I ran across Nusphere’s PHPEd, Version 4.5.

Workspaces, Projects and Accounts

Coming from a PHP background, I am used to scripting from the beginning. And since PHP argues that it’s made for rapid development, in reality the code you produce is very rapid and unorganized as well. While of course rapid development and organization/quality are not mutually exclusive, reality is different. You can see an example of what I mean, when you try to run scripts written for PHP3 with the register_globals option turned off.

Over the years, I began to organize my projects in a different manner. Primarily this was due to development for clients has to follow a certain standard, code-wise (make ‘em scale), code documentation and organization in general.

Organization is a key-feature where PHPEd flexes its muscles. You organize workspaces, ideal for the roadwarrior, and then projects.

Workspaces can be useful if you freelance and encounter different environments often. When I work at a client’s office, they often provide a local development environment which you can plug into. When you are at home or at your office, it might be a very different game. So instead of opening a text editor, ftp program, putty or whatever else you need for programming, PHPEd’s saves the day. All it requires is that you set it up in the beginning.

So whenever the workspace is ready, then you setup projects. Inside the project screen you have the ability to add accounts to your systems (servers). And the accounts can be virtually anything. FTP, with or without SSL, secure shell, webdav - you name it. Together with the project setup, you can also add Subversion or CVS to integrate the source code and version control.

Smart-Sync

Another very useful feature of PHPEd - especially useful for collaborating with others - is the Smart-Sync option. When using the Smart-Sync option, Nusphere’s editor will try to determine if the file you are about to upload or download is newer than the version on the server. However, it does not sync in terms of how Subversion or CVS syncs or merges a file. It will just try to determine if you are up to date or not.

Even though this is an advantage of PHPEd, I found it sometimes increasingly difficult to work with this. While there is an override to upload files to the server, there is no option to override Smart-Download. I am not sure if my setup was flawed, but I believe since I am in the same timezone as my development server, it should download a file which I uploaded myself a day ago. Yet PHPEd prompted that my file was newer than the uploaded one and refused to override with the server copy.

Another incident happened when a co-worker and I both worked on the same file on the server. Smart-sync would not download it and the file was indeed “newer” than my version of the file. Yet it was refused the download.

The workaround for this issue is to delete the file in question, and to sync the current folder. And then you are up to date - hopefully. Or you use the build in Explorer to download the files in question.
For a future version it would be nice to implement a “force-download” option in one of the next releases.

Screenshots

PhpEd Interface		Code Explorer
Account Manager		Auto Completion
Transfer Manager

Debugging

PHPEd also comes packaged with a listener for DBG. Since I currently have no access to this on a server, I could not try the feature, but it can be worth-while. Using breakpoints saves you a lot of echo’s and var_dump()’s in order to keep track of your variables inside the application. If you are familiar with programming from C++ or Java, this is a must-have.

Other notable features

Along with project management, debugging, syncing and so on, PHPEd has a really comprehensive feature list. Most notable, a very well working database client, function references, soap wizards, and form wizards, and a lot more.

For example, the Sourcecode highlighting of PHPEd is another mandatory feature in any editor today and works really well. Support for highlighting comes for PHP (up to 5), Perl, HTML, CSS, SQL and Python.

A nice to have is that PHPEd saves your entire workspace, when you close the application and reopen it. That is including files you had opened when you closed the application.

Day-to-Day Operations

Running PHPEd makes a lot of the work easier. Once you setup the workspace and project, you are ready to go.

The only glitches about running PHPEd that I noticed with the old 4.0 version were the auto completion of variables, classes and function names. Once resolved, the information is indeed valuable, but with a larger project this can make your program hang. When I moved to 4.5, those issues were resolved for me.

Another thing is that whenever I close PHPEd, it almost sweeps the entire system into the abyss. I have no idea where this comes from, but I had to kill the process (especially the live debugger) very often.

Last but not least on my list of improvements is the Smart-Sync option. While I see that the option is valuable in a collaboration environment it also provides space for practical improvement.

The problem I had is that a lot of times, a colleague worked on files and even though we both knew that an updated version is on the server, PhpEd refused to “smart-sync” it. The work around would be to download the folder in question using the build in file explorer, which is of course “OK” - but a hassle.

The bottom line

One of the bigger issues I found with this software is the pricing model. While I understand very well that selling software is a business, the pricing model of this IDE is tough to digest.

There are 2 versions of PHPEd:

• $299 - gets you basic support plus simple program updates for service and small feature packs
• $495 - gets you upgrades plus priority support

Shall I buy, or shall I not buy? - Well, that’s up to you to decide. All you need to do is measure up the hours you spend running around with four programs (edit, save, upload, download) and in my opinion the money spent is well worth the time savings.

Alternatives to Nusphere’s PHPEd would be the free IDE Eclipse or Maguma Workbench.