As a web developer, I've gone through my fair share of programs for me to do my work in, and not all Apps are made the same. So here's a list of the best software and tools that help you get the job done, and get it done right.
Coding
phpDesigner 2008 (Windows only) ~ Free or $55
phpDesigner is the best editor i've ever used and I have no intention of ever switching to a different IDE. Don't just take my word for it, check out the feature list:
- Lighting fast and easy to learn and use!
- Full-blown PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript editor
- Intuitive, customizable workspace with theme support
- Syntax highlighting for PHP, HTML, CSS, JS etc.
- Code explorer, code completion, and code tip
- Project manager and project workspace
- Find declarations in projects in an intuitive way
- Debug and profile PHP code with Xdebug
- Live error detection for PHP, HTML and CSS
- Remote ftp editing
- Advanced search and replace
- Code snippets library and templates
- TortoiseSVN support
- Fast code beautifier for PHP, HTML and CSS
- Show matching and missing brackets and tags
- Learn PHP with integration of the PHP manual
Download the Latest Trial Version
Download the Free Version (older)
Alternative: Coda (mac only) ~ $99
If I wasn't on a windows machine and using phpDesigner, I'd be developing in Coda.
Designing
Photoshop CS4 (Win/Mac) ~ $349/$999
Photoshop is the industry standard graphics editing program, and for good reason. Photoshop is the most feature rich drawing program on the planet. If you don't use photoshop then either you never touch interfaces, or you're not good at what you do.
Alternative: GIMP ~ Free
GIMP is the wanna be Photoshop. Good News is: It's able to run on every OS and it's free. Bad news: It's not photoshop...in the least.
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PHPDesigner sounds like it has all the right features but for Mac users like myself I have to say that Coda, though beautiful, is not the best tool for serious PHP development. It is great if you need a good-looking intuitive HTML+CSS editor and it supports PHP okay for things like WordPress theme development, but it isn't really an IDE for programming. It lacks a lot of the most important features you listed for PHPDesigner.
After trying everything I've settled on NetBeans for mac. It's annoying that its Java-based and not really native but at the same time they have made an effort to seem natural in OSX (darker grey theme) and it looks a hell of a lot more native than Eclipse (which feels like linux/windows). I wish there was a real IDE that looked as good as Coda but IMHO there isn't for Mac, so we're stuck with the cross-platform Java monsters like NetBeans and Eclipse.