I’ve recently been contacted to do some contract PHP/MySQL work again.  So I started looking to see what was available for IDE tools.  I wanted something that would appear familiar to me.  I didn’t want to have to relearn the PHP language, AND learn a new IDE.

I found VS.PHP – It’s a PHP IDE that sits in the Visual Studio IDE.  They have several versions depending on what you need.  I chose the Standalone version, since I develop in a Virtual PC Windows XP box.  I didn’t want to install my VS 2008 license there, and not be able to use VS 2008 under Vista (where I do most of my .NET development.

I’ve only completed some sample projects, but so far, I’m impressed.  The IDE is familiar to me, and I get syntax checking, intellisense and the F5 functionality to test.  Reminds me a lot of doing ASP.Net development. I’m still using the free trial, but for the price of $99, it’s a definite “Must Buy” if I get the contract.

For the MySQL front-end, I’m trying MySQL-Front.  It has a trial version, so I’m using that.  So far, it’s decent.  The UI is a little old, but fairly easy to figure out.  I’ll be looking around for other visual front-ends for MySQL.  I like the SQL Server Management Studio, and I’d like something similar for MySQL.

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