Aptana Releases PHP Development Tool

Aptana on Dec. 11 released Aptana PHP 1.0, its open-source integrated development environment for PHP application development.

With the new product, Aptana extends the functionality the company offers to developers in its Aptana Studio tools suite, which is an Eclipse-based IDE for AJAX and Web development.

Meanwhile, Aptana PHP provides common IDE features such as code assist and instant syntax checking capabilities that support not only PHP, but also AJAX libraries, JavaScript, HTML and CSS.

In addition, developers can use the internal PHP server that is included in the Aptana PHP installation or another PHP server of their choice to preview their PHP pages in any of the multiple Web browsers built right into Aptana Studio. The product also has PHP code generation features and PHP debugging and refactoring tools.

Click here to read about Aptana's Jaxer 1.0 AJAX server.

"Certainly, when creating solutions for the Web today, a PHP developer not only needs great tools for their server language of choice, but also great tools for the set of languages used in the browser: AJAX." said Paul Colton, CEO and founder of Aptana. "However, we did not stop there. Aptana Cloud, an easy to use but powerfully scalable application hosting and life-cycle management service built on cloud computing infrastructure, lets users instantly deploy their PHP apps to production servers as well as manage projects through development and release cycles via hosted source control, preproduction staging environments, application monitoring services and more. And do it all from within Aptana Studio. Such end-to-end integration with cloud computing services is unprecedented."

Indeed, that may be why some developers are choosing to switch from other PHP development environments to the new Aptana PHP platform.

"My team and I have used Zend, PHPEdit, and Aptana Studio, all for extended periods of time," said Greg Ervin, IT director for Aurora WDC, a competitive intelligence research firm. "All packages 'do the job,' but Aptana's tools actually help you to code more efficiently, and in many different arenas. Today's Web developer needs to understand more than one language, and Aptana understands that, with tools for PHP, MySQL, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, [Adobe] AIR and others."

Benjamin Shine, a freelance Web developer, said he had been using JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA as "my editor of choice … But Aptana Studio has delivered a game-changer: the IDE provides integrated deployment to cloud servers."

And John Beynon, a Web developer with a British rich Internet development and consulting firm called Monochrome, said, "If you're looking to host a PHP application with minimum fuss and the option of scaling up [or] down, then Aptana Cloud is a great choice and certainly by far the easiest way I've ever seen to getting an app up and running in the cloud."

Aptana PHP is free to use under its open-source license and may be downloaded from www.aptana.com. Aptana Studio Pro, priced at $99, adds priority support and additional features including SFTP, FTPS, a JSON editor and remote project import wizards. Aptana Cloud pricing starts at under $1 per day.