Anyone know what's a good interface development environment for Php? Something that has highlighting, auto type-ins, a nice rich database of commands, etc. Looking for the best free one's out there.

Secondly, I just bought 3 php books: Php Anthology I & II, Kevin Yank's Build a Dynamic Website using Php/MySQL from SitePoint. You guys think it was worth it? (Going to learn for real now! :) )

about the books thing, do they help? if they do then they are worth it :P and regarding the php ide thing, there have been posts about this before: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=93636&highlight=php+editor , http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90967&highlight=php+editor are just a few (just search for something like "php editor"). i use 1st Page 2k (http://evrsoft.com). I like it. A lot of people use Notepad, which is nice too.

Try going to PHP-Editors dot com for a list of PHP editors. I'm new, so can't post that in link format. Personally, I use EditPlus for PHP coding; though it is more of a general purpose code editor. VIM is remarkable, but has a high learning curve if you are not from a Unix environment. If you are looking for a PHP IDE that is free, I've tried Dev-PHP and it is okay. Eclipse with the PHP plugins is not bad, though a bit of a resource hog.

There are several others that cost money (> $100), the above are free, except EditPlus, which is 30 bucks or something.

Regards,
Seldan

Thanks for help, I was thinking something for Php more along the lines of JCreator (An excellent JAVA IDE), if you know what it is.

Zend Studio is what I use. You can get it for $200, or Zend Encoder + Zend Studio for $300 under the small business bit :)

Does the job really well, although it is written in Java so can be slow on older machines.

I've tried probably 15 editors and I always come back to EditPlus.

I've tried probably 15 editors and I always come back to EditPlus.

Lol, same here. I have tried the big, slow loading IDE's, the bigger, slower loading WYSIWYG (Dreamweaver) editors, down to fast vi/vim/elvis/gvim. I always end up back to EditPlus. It just works. About the only thing I wish it had, was a built-in CVS interface.

I've tried probably 15 editors and I always come back to EditPlus.
Same here, but i tried ALL editors, not only 15 , and always came back to my first love, Edit+ . Is simply amazing, small, and its FTP features are unique.