The TSW Blog

It's that time of the year again, and I would like to wish you and your families a very merry Christmas and a happy new year! 2007 was definitely the year of WebCoder for TSW - I spent most of the first 8 months getting it ready for release, and some of the last 4 months supporting and updating it. There has already been several maintenance releases, offering both bug fixes and enhancements, and I have the next update ready for you very soon. SiteSync was released too, and I'm very happy to see that you have accepted it so well. I use SiteSync my self almost every day, and I already have features planned for the next version, including SFTP and FTPS support. However, my main focus through the last 3 months, has been TSW phpCoder 2008. You will see the first beta versions within January, and I really can't wait to show it to you. I'm working very hard on getting it beta ready, but new and cool ideas just keep popping up in my head :). As a small Christmas present, here is the video I promised you, showing some of the more advanced debugging functionality of phpCoder 2008:

Click to see a video of the advanced debugging functionality of TSW phpCoder 2008

Please let me know what you think of it. Merry Christmas everyone :)

Hello all. As promised, I will show you how debugging works in the upcoming TSW phpCoder 2008. The first video only shows the most basic functionality of the debugger - breakpoints, stepping through and into/out of code, as well as watches. Debugging is by far my favorite feature in phpCoder, and hopefully, you will like it too. Have a look and let me know what you think:

Click here to see a video of basic debugging in TSW phpCoder 2008

Feedback is much appreciated. Stay tuned for a video of the more advanced debugger functionality :)

A potential customer wrote me an e-mail about his thoughts on WebCoder. One of the things he missed, was a way to insert comments around a piece of CSS code, using a keyboard shortcut. I wrote him back with a single line of scripting code, and advised him to put it in a User button, and then create a keyboard shortcut to that button. He wrote me back and told me that it would be great if this single script could be used both in CSS and HTML, and that it would be great to have a script for removing the comments again - doing stuff like this is handy for debugging purposes, as most of us know. Here is the script I wrote for him - hopefully someone else can use it as well, or at least learn something from it :). Here it is:

if((Editor.Document.Language.Key == "PHP") or (Editor.Document.Language.Key == "CSS")): 
	startTag = "/*"
	endTag = "*/"
	
if(Editor.Document.Language.Key == "HTML"):
	startTag = "<!--"
	endTag = "-->"
	
s = Editor.SelectedView.SelectedText
if(s != ""):
	if((s.StartsWith(startTag)) and (s.EndsWith(endTag))):
		Editor.SelectedView.SelectedText = s.Substring(startTag.Length, s.Length - startTag.Length - endTag.Length)
	else:
		ScriptUtils.InsertTags(startTag, endTag)

WebCoder introduced PHP IntelliSense several versions ago, where your PHP code was parsed to obtain relevant information for the IntelliSense functionality. Including files is a very used technic with PHP, and WebCoder supported this by allowing you to define paths to where you would commonly place your include files. Obviously, parsing lots of files is a big task, and should be done as rarely as possible, to save system resources. However, for some users, this wasn't enough - they have include files which include other files which... and so on. To prevent WebCoder from hogging too many resources, it stops after the first level of included files, that is, it only parses include files of the main file, and no more.

It still works like this in phpCoder 2008, but this new application does come with another way of handling include files: Project based include files. When you create a new project, you will be able to define which folders contains the included files - you can even define specific files. When you open the project, all the files are parsed and the information is cached, allowing you to see it in all project documents. This will also come in handy for people including their files dynamically, since phpCoder will no longer care whether or not you use an include statement for a file that it can actually find.

Of course, the old way still works too, if you prefer it :)

I'm very proud to show you the very first video of TSW phpCoder 2008 in action. One of my favorite features of the application is the new PHP Tidy. It will help you write prettier code, by formatting it as configured by you, as you type or when you run the function on your document. You can customize it to suit your coding style, and while it will help you keeping your own coding standards, it can help you get a better overview of other peoples code as well. Open the document, press F4, and all the code is formatted the way you prefer it. This video also shows another new feature: The live syntax check. Have a look and be sure to let me know what you think of it! Oh, and don't worry about the simple interface shown in the video - it's simply running in fullscreen mode, to focus on the feature being shown. There are a bit more to it, which you will see in the next video :)

Click here to see PHP Tidy in action

Stay tuned until next time, where I will show you something even more cool - debugging!

As I hinted at earlier, I'm working on a new application. It's called TSW phpCoder, and is, as the name suggests, a dedicated PHP editor. While WebCoder keeps the broad focus, phpCoder is intended for PHP developers only. It will come with a nice set of features to keep the PHP developer happy, and the entire interface is based around writing PHP code. Obviously, you will see stuff that's in WebCoder as well, but phpCoder will be lighter, and almost every feature will be PHP related in one way or another. With that said, most PHP developers will write HTML too and even CSS on occasions - phpCoder will of course help with this, just like it helps you write PHP code. phpCoder brings new features to the table, and besides all the small adjustments and improvements, I think you will find real debugging and profiling, PHP Tidy and live syntax check among the interesting additions! I'm currently creating a couple of videos to show you this, so stay tuned - the first one will be posted within the next couple of days! If you have any suggestions or comments, let me know :)