As a PHP developer, i know i am certainly in need of yet another PHP IDE.

[/sarcasm]

Forgive me for not being familiar with netBeans in anything other than name, but is this product something that has a price tag or is it going to be available free in any form.

The only reason i draw attention to this, is not because i am freetard, but my experience of high end IDEs for PHP, such as Zend's studio, is that individually i dont want to fork out for it. I dont use ripped software, only free by open source. Then any employer i have to worked for as said the same thing, 'why do we need to spend x on zend when xyz will do this'.

This in my view is also why Symfony is much more widespread as a php framework than Zend.

SO Sun, you are integrating PHP in netBeans, well thats nice for you.

"PHP users now get syntax highlighting, code completion, code generators, debugging and database wizards"

In other words, features which have been available in many other editors for a good number of years now! I recently started using Activestate Komodo for PHP development and have had no reason to switch back to anything I was using previously (e.g. Code View in Dreamweaver... no thanks!).

Yes, well, Ubuntu might see that sometime in Q4 2012. They still have 6.01 in their repos, You have to download the sun package if you want 6.1 and it looks like Intrepid will still provide 6.01.

God knows why.

I for one like the idea of developing PHP in Netbeans. Its is a very nice IDE.

Jeremy - NetBeans is open-source, ie. free

"Forgive me for not being familiar with netBeans in anything other than name, but is this product something that has a price tag or is it going to be available free in any form."

It's free.

I'm not generally one for using IDEs for any language, but I use NetBeans for doing stuff with Java. It has less of a learning curve than Eclipse (and is far less horrible to use, IMO) and if it had support for Perl and (P|J)ython then I'd truly be a happy camper. And yes, I know about Komodo for Perl and Python, and I also know that it blows goats.

I hope they address some of the performance issues too - even on a 'Doze box with 3Gb of RAM, 6.0(.1) is painfully slow to start up compared to the Mac version running on a dual-core Mini with a solitary gig of RAM.

...when you have emacs?

"In other words, features which have been available in many other editors for a good number of years now! "

PHP support is just being added to netbeans, so it is trivial that these features are new to PHP developers in netbeans... even if other PHP IDEs have them, netbeans does too now

"SO Sun, you are integrating PHP in netBeans, well thats nice for you.

Forgive me for not being familiar with netBeans in anything other than name, but is this product something that has a price tag or is it going to be available free in any form."

sarcasm and ignorance do not mix well together... if you are going to be sarcastic, at least be informed... netbeans is 100% open source, under a double license, GPLv2 and CDDL... and yes, it actually IS nice that sun is adding PHP to netbeans

I used the Early Access for PHP release as well as the Beta and I personally love it. I code in a few other languages so it's nice to have all my programming (less perl) in one great environment and it's free.

"This in my view is also why Symfony is much more widespread as a php framework than Zend."

FUD. Symfony and ZendFramework are two very different things. Symfony is an ORM. ZendFramework is pretty much everything else. Oh and it costs a grand total of NZ$0. And its BSD licensed, so the Free's got you coming and going :-)

"Yes, well, Ubuntu might see that sometime in Q4 2012. They still have 6.01 in their repos, You have to download the sun package if you want 6.1 and it looks like Intrepid will still provide 6.01."

Yup. Same as Eclipse... Just try combinig a repo install with Eclipse plugins

Back on topic,,,

I've just given a NetBeans a whirl and as a long time Eclipse/PDT user I must say I'm well impressed. 20M download comes with everything needed, including a working Mercurial plugin and basic database support. Compared to a120M PDT download and fussing around with DB, Javascript and mercurial plugins... And for some reason it seems to be snappier than equivalently loaded Eclipse.

What is this "emacs" of which you speak?

A real programmer needs only some stiffened card and a hole punch...

I have been trying out ZSfE for the past 30 days and have to say I was not impressed. I have a strong C++ background working with VisualStudio and VisualAssist (an awesome 3rd party productivity enhancing tool by Wholetomato). My past PHP projects I completed with Eclipse PDT (an incredible pain to get everything setup), and UltraEdit (bare bones text editor with syntax highlighting).

I recently decided to start using Zend Framework and thought ZSfE would be great. It has a nice feature set but it is just really slow. And it freezes several times per week.

My trial period expired over the weekend and I have to say I am not at all inspired to fork over $399 for that thing. So I thought I would give NetBeans 6.5 a shot.

It is not as fast as what I am used to in the C++ environment, but it sure is nicer than ZSfE! It is more responsive, and just feels more stable. I know that is not an in depth assessment, but for the two days I have been working with it (my existing Zend Framework project imported in a snap) I am very impressed.

And yes, a real programmer uses emacs or vi. And yes, for a code base you have been working on for 5 years and know like the back of your hand you can run circles around anyone with an IDE for many of the basic text editing tasks, but many people work in several languages with multiple frameworks and test suites and libraries and for that I can run circles around you with an IDE that has intellisence or code completion and refactoring tools (yes, emacs has this too to some degree).

I've used several Java IDEs over the years, with JDeveloper being a constant because of working in mostly Oracle environments. Couldn't get on with Eclipse - slow, crashed & a confusing mish mash of extensions/versions for the uninitiated.

I tried NetBeans (had actually paid to own JStudioCreator sometime before for JSF work- fool!) in large part because of a move into Ruby on Rails, which NetBeans supports pretty well (along with JRuby).

I must say I've been impressed with NetBeans - it's slow on my windows machine, but then its quicker than Eclipse & proved more stable - & makes a good fist of Ruby (best Ruby IDE I've tried). It also has basic UML support.

NetBeans is a good IDE & is worth a 2nd look.