Tools I use

A lot of people ask me for recommendations about what IDEs to use, what frameworks, what…whatever. So here is a post with all the tools and frameworks I use. I don’t say they’re the best, but they do their job really well and I’m very comfortable using them. Most of them are open source and free of charge.

Frameworks

On the server-side, I use CakePHP as a framework. I’ve tried so far other frameworks, like CodeIgniter, PHP on Trax or Simphony, but nothing gets the job done like CakePHP. On the client side, I use prototype and script.aculo.us.

I develop most of my scripts on these frameworks.

Developer tools on Linux

• Distro: Kubuntu 7.04 - The Festy Fawn
• IDE: Quanta+ / PHP Eclipse (it runs horribly slow sometimes, for unknown reasons)
• FTP/File manager: Krusader
• LAMP solution with Apache 2 and PHP 5 (I don’t code for PHP4)

Developer tools on Windows

• Version: XP - Service Pack 2
• IDE: PHP Eclipse /Adobe Dreamweaver
• FTP/File manager: Total Commander
• XAMPP

Browsers and extensions

I usually browse the web with Firefox, no matter what OS I’m running. I test my work on many browsers, such as Firefox, IE 7 & 6 (read this very cool article on how to run multiple IE instances under Windows), Opera, Safari (the Windows version, since I don’t own a Mac) and Flock (I’ve stumbled upon this browser while browsing the Flickr API and decided to give it a try - nothing special so far).

Extensions I can do without: Firebug, Google Toolbar and All-in-one Gestures.