.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE The heartbreaking story of our NuSphere PhpEd PHP IDE review
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY We review a product that should never have scored this low.
.OTHER
I’m doing quite a lot of PHP development these days and as an old-school coder, I tend to like coding with a full IDE (Interactive Development Environment). I find having editor integrated with debugger, integrated with various code management tools to be an invaluable combination.
There are a number of PHP IDEs available, some free and some commercial. When I first started my latest run of PHP coding about a year ago, I found and settled on an Eclipse-based IDE called [[http://www.aptana.com/|Aptana]]. It was wonderful and ran PHP very smoothly. Unfortunately, the company simply stopped supporting PHP and moved all their efforts to Java and Ruby, so I stopped using Aptana.
I’m also a big fan of [[http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200907/00002402001.html|UltraEdit]], the amazing text editor with more features than you can possibly imagine. When I found out IDM Computer Solutions had introduced [[http://www.ultraedit.com/products/uestudio.html|UEStudio]], an IDE based on UltraEdit, I jumped all over it. Unfortunately, UEStudio didn’t integrate the PHP debugger into the environment (it came with wiring instructions, but it wasn’t a native part of the IDE), and while it might have made for a workable solution, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted.
I’m a fussy programmer, but for a good reason. I know that every minor productivity tweak I do can gain tens or even hundreds of hours back during development, so it’s worth it.
Then I came upon [[http://www.nusphere.com|NuSphere’s PhpEd]], which the company bills as "The World Famous PHP IDE". At $299, the product is among the more expensive solutions. I let the company know I was reviewing the product and they were kind enough to provide me with a reviewer’s copy.
.H1 NuSphere PhpEd: the good
As it installs out of the box, PhpEd is a quite excellent IDE. I found a few minor display glitches and — as is always the case with this product category — a few features that were not intuitively obvious, but otherwise, I found the product to be a fully excellent IDE.
The product was chock full of all the features you’d want, from syntax highlighting to one-click definition display, to code completion, to integral debugger. I particularly liked the IE and Firefox toolbars, where you could set an option to debug the next form submission, and it’d drop you at your breakpoint right after clicking a form’s submit button.
.H1 NuShpere PhpEd: the bad
A few weeks into my test cycle with PhpEd, I got an upgrade notification. Being a dutiful tester, I downloaded the update and installed it.
Shortly after, I discovered that the most valuable feature of the product, the excellent browser toolbar integration of the debugger, had simply ceased working. Undaunted, I sent an email to the person who’d provided me with the review copy. No reply.
So I [[http://forum.nusphere.com/debugger-toolbar-failed-to-start-dbglistener-application-t7135.html|posted a query]] on the company’s discussion board. No reply. Ever.
I sent an email again, this time using the company’s Contact Us form. No reply.
After digging around the discussion board, I found that [[http://forum.nusphere.com/future-of-phped-t7015.html|many users were complaining]] about the same lack of response from the company to their posts. One user even postulated that the company had gone out of business. There was a short response from the company, then nothing since April.
To this day, almost four months later, there has still been no reply to any form of interogatory. It’s as if there’s no one home.
.H1 Our recommendation
It breaks my heart to write reviews like this. On its own, with a responsive company, this product would have garnered a 4-star rating. It’s on track with a little clean-up to actually get 5-star status.
But then, there’s the company’s complete lack of responsiveness. When their product essentially stopped working, there was no response. When other customers (remember, this is not a free product) also asked for help, there was no response.
The results are clear. Based on our reviewer guidelines, we must give this product a lowly 1-out-of-5, our "don’t buy this" recommendation. The fact that it stopped working wasn’t the flaw. In fact, I’m reasonably sure there would have been an easy fix. But the fact that the product stopped working and the company has a pattern of being completely unresponsive means we can’t recommend you buy PhpEd.
Based on our [[http://www.authorpower.com/reviewguide|published reviewer guidelines]], we are required to recommend "don’t buy this". This is deeply disappointing. The company’s unwillingness to visit its own discussion board and answer customer questions lost it a 4-star rating and dropped it into "don’t buy this" territory.
NuSphere PhpEd coulda been a contender. Instead, a 1-out-of-5.
.RATING 1
.BIO
