Anybody familiar with Zend Studio?
 

I'm a huge fan of Dreamweaver, so I'm not sure if this is going to work out or not, but I decided to give Zend Studio a try, and I'm curious about two things in particular in the last five minutes of using it.

First thing actually has to do with the studio itself. I have phpMyAdmin and a test directory in my web root, and I was wondering if there was a way to cloak those directories from Zend. I want to be able to access them, but I don't want the classes et al showing up in my project outline.

Second thing is a regular expression question, but related to Zend's error/warning reporting. It's spitting out a TONNE of warnings that I have bad escape sequences which I think is a little rash. For example:

Part of my url validating regular expression, it's telling me that \? is a bad escape sequence and that I should be using \\?. Sure, if I wanted it to match as few backslashes as possible, that makes sense. So what's up, why is Zend freaking out about this?

Thanks for any help or insight on the Zend Studio.
-m

I use Zend Studio, great piece of software. You can add/remove specific folders in the Project View. Just remove the phpMyAdmin folder from the project and you'll be fine.

I'm not sure about your second question, I don't use its debugging system.

Remove them without deleting them from the system?

The best way to configure your project is to have your files as the project files and add the phpMyAdmin as an include path (right-click on the project -> configure include path).

Guy.

Yes I use it, brilliant in anything PHP, crappy in everything else xD..

Yes. Right-click on the project, choose Delete. Then choose the option "delete the project, keep the files on the filesystem" and click ok. (the option is a little different, I don't remember it now).

Well, it's made for PHP, so what did you expect? To cook you breakfast? It's like saying that Yahoo Messenger is crappy at editing text. Yes, it is, because it's not made for that!

Thank you everybody for their help, but for now I've just returned to using Dreamweaver. Zend Studio has a really clunky ugly interface, and I guess I've just grown accustomed to DW.
-m

You think Zend Studio is bad? ZSfE is even worse. The application is a nightmare.

I just had to say it.

The last question is quite simple and logical that it gives you those errors or warnings. Its simply because your using double quote signs which will tell PHP to intepret the string with possible escape characters, then use single sign quotes insted and the warning should be gone :)

ZSE is great. In fact, Eclipse as a platform is amazing. I decided to go back to ZSE after getting acquainted with how Eclipse functions... so beautiful. Perspectives, completely customizable interface on the fly... ("Oh man.. I need to see another file at the same time and I don't want to put it on my other screen... *click* *drag* yay!").

Not to mention it has all of the Eclipse plugins available to it. While the setup is a little more advanced than most newer programmers tend to prefer, it delivers tenfold in performance and features. If you want to ease yourself into the Eclipse world (which I highly recommend getting into)... try out Eclipse PDT or Aptana. Aptana is great because its geared towards newcomers to the Eclipse world.

ZSE is buggy beyond compare. I checked a few forums, and everyone seems to agree. It is a pain in the ass with file extensions, and even configuration doesn't fix that. It closes randomly, and reports bugs every other minute. Click and drag is wonderful, sure, but that is no excuse for poor functionality. I could go on and on, but there is no reason.

I have used Dreamweaver for years now, but a month or so ago it really got on my nerves. The remote (ftp) support is seriously terrible! Many times it just forgets passwords, it can't connect while smartftp can and much more.

When i started PHP i used notepad++ simply because the highlighting. 2 years later i wanted FTP support and a function database, thats when i started using dreamweaver.

Now since a month I've been using ZS because of the debugging and mainly the nice FTP support... Multiple FTP connections at a time! <3

PHP Designer for the win!