NetBeans

NetBeans is not an alternative to Notepad++.

Notepad++ is designed to be lightweight.

Netbeans is the polar opposite of lightweight. It's bloated, massive, javastuff.

Netbeans is cross platform, so netbeans is an alternative to netbeans. Not to notepad++. Suggesting that it's an alternative shows a complete lack of understanding what notepad++ is.

I use this along site Notepad++. It still needs a lot more improvements and features.

I tried PHPEdit which was ok, then bought Komodo to do PHP editing which was pretty good, then moved on to Eclipse, which was a real pain to get working. Netbeans is my current editor of choice for PHP. Combines well with SVN compared to all the others. Excellent product.

I found then NetBeans is perfect for PHP development: function cross-reference, autocomplete feature (with parameters), the amazing PHP debugging feature (using Xdebug), and so on.

If this project had more heart and mind share I would probably use it for all my software development needs. As it is I use it for anything JVM-related (although right now its support for application servers is a bit lacking -- Geronimo and JOnAS are not supported out of the box, for example). I find it a much cleaner environment to work in than Eclipse. Further, its support of Swing is unparallelled by any other IDE I've seen or tried. (Eclipse, for all practical purposes, doesn't support Swing, preferring its SWT library instead.)