Last Updated: February 25, 2016
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1.208K
· darkpsy

So you want to choose an IDE eh?

As a web developer, Your commitment issues in life can be clearly highlighted by how often you change your code editors.

If you're going to choose one IDE for front-end development :

Let that be PHPStorm 6. Don't let PHP scare you, while it may seem primarily for PHP, It leaves no stone unturned to keep your
JavaScript nicely highlighted and the debugging stress free!

The advantages are way too many to enlist, here are a few :

- Zen Coding

- Site Manager ( Like Dreamweaver but a gazillion times better than DW. )

- God Level Auto-complete (it auto-completes file paths too!)

- Image Editing

- Seamless Git integration. (Many swear by this as the USP of this IDE)

- Rename something and it renames all references to that across your site

- The project is opened from where you left it, in fact same line number!

The moment you start using it, give it a few days and you'll discover so many gems that'll make your coding a lot've fun and fast.

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I've found that Visual Studio 2012 (with the Web Essentials extension and/or Mindscape Web Workbench for preprocessors) is surprisingly a really great front-end IDE -- and don't let the MS scare you :)

It's got most of the stuff you mention, and the Express edition is free. Scott Hanselman has some great blog posts about the new features.

over 1 year ago ·

@Zaus I'm sure it's just as good. however, i'm only scraping the surface of PHPStorm with those pointers. It grows on you! : ]
I'll give Visual Studio a Try though, thanks!

@Mechax That was the IDE I moved from, look I won't disagree with your point at all, I'm myself an admirer of how resource efficient , lightening fast sublime text is - coupled with the package control manager.
The only think I'd have in favor of PHPStorm is that it packs all those commonly used plugins in one software. The project management, auto-complete and file searching inside folders is a total life saver, something which sublime misses out on. Do let me know how you like it. : ]

over 1 year ago ·