CodeLobster Review - Let’s Check the PHP IDE!

Intro to CodeLobster IDE review

To start creating a project, every programmer needs some tools, that will make the coding faster and easier. Most developers prefer to have everything in one tool. That’s why most of us decided to go for IDE, which usually provides more than just a code editor.

IDE usually consists of many useful features, that help developers to stay focused instead of changing the windows every time they want to perform different actions. IDE consists of at least a code editor, debugging tool, and build automation tools, but those are just essentials. There are IDEs that have even version control systems and many many more.

What’s really important about a good IDE is that it should work for you, with your favorite programming language, and keep you focused. That’s why if you are a web developer and you simply don’t need additional compilers or interpreters. That’s why you should select the tool, that will work the best for your technology.

In this article, I’ll check the CodeLobster. It’s an integrated development environment dedicated to programmers, who are focused on developing full-features websites on PHP.

Let’s start!

What is CodeLobster?

CodeLobster is a free IDE. Its main goal is to simplify and speed up the process of developing PHP websites. CodeLobster is on the market for a long time now, and every year it gets lots of new enthusiasts.

CodeLobster is not limited just to PHP files. Developers can use this IDE to edit HTML, CSS, Javascript, and even Typescript files. A very common thing in building a PHP project is that files are often mixed, so they are not just pure PHP. CodeLobster does a great job here, by highlighting the content in a proper way, no matter what is the file extension.

CodeLobster uses the most updated documentation downloaded from official websites. That’s why it can provide contextual help for all supported programming languages. So you can always rely on this tool, and it won’t suggest you some outdated code.

The CodeLobster is also a very intuitive and user-friendly tool. It brings lots of useful features in one, well-organized space.

Now, let’s check how fast we can install CodeLobster on our machine.

How to install Lobster IDE?

CodeLobster is a multi-platform tool, which means that no matter which operating system you have, you can use this IDE.

Right now, let’s go through the CodeLobster installation on Windows step by step, to see how easy and intuitive this process is.

1.Download the Installer from CodeLobster official website CodeLobster

2.Start the installer, agree with the License Agreement and press Next

3.Choose installation location and go to the next step

4.Choose the start menu folder or select that you don’t want any shortcuts and press Next

5.Select file types that you’d like to open on double click, which is a pretty useful step, I never saw it in different tools. Press the Next button

6.Select the color scheme. You can choose from 11 different themes, patterned from other code editors, and go to the next step.

7.Next step is to select the language of the IDE. You can choose from 17 different languages. From very popular ones like English, Russian or Spanish to more rare languages like Hungarian or Slovak.

8.In the next step, you can select components that you’d like to install with CodeLobster, like Angular, CodeIgniter, Bootstrap or many more. When you decided what you need you can finally press the Install button.

9.Installation shouldn’t take more than a minute. And when it’s ready to press Finish and open the IDE.

It seems like the installation is very intuitive and fast. During the simple step-by-step process, we can decide on how the IDE will look like. Right now, let’s see what’s inside!

CodeLobster IDE features

As I already mentioned, CodeLobster is not just a code editor. It provides lots of helpful features, which main task is to speed up and simplify the coding. Let’s take a look at the features that CodeLobster provides.

multi-platform - it can be used on any operating system you wish, starting from Mac OS, through Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora.

code highlighting & pair highlighting - as many different code editors, CodeLobster comes with code highlighting, so you won’t get confused. Another great thing is that CodeLobster will take care of closing tags, parentheses, or quotation marks. By highlighting them, you never have spent hours counting one by one to find an error.

intelligent auto-complete - CodeLobster comes with intelligent auto-complete feature. It automatically completes tags or attributes in your HTML code, properties, and values for CSS. In Javascript in auto-completes keywords, DOM elements, and their properties. CodeLobster is a PHP IDE that has also a very advanced PHP autocomplete.

This feature will make writing the next project much faster and definitely less buggy.

easy navigation - CodeLobster makes it easier to work with bigger files. It allows creating bookmarks that can be used to navigate between different places in the edited code file.

Another great option for navigation in CodeLobster is to open target files quickly pressing the name of the file with the CTRL button.

context & dynamic help - This feature helps you to get all information about any element of HTML code with one click in one place. For example to learn more about <div> element place the pointer on the element and press F1.

The default source about the elements is W3, but you can easily adjust it, to sources that you like the most.

Code collapsing - to make it even easier, while working with bigger files of code, you can easily collapse part of the file to make more space, and see on the screen what you need. To collapse the block of code, just press the - sign on the left.

commenting code - good code is code with comments, to let other developers know, what we actually created. That’s why it’s very important to have a code editor which allows us to create comments easily.

CodeLobster has the possibility to create code comments with lines and blocks. To add a comment you just need to select some text or code you’d like to comment, press Alt+C, or Edit/Comment Lines.

PHP debugger - debugging is very ofter a huge piece of coding. At least a few times per day we have to solve some problem and debug, to find which part of the code doesn’t work. That’s why if your IDE comes with a good debugger, you are a lucky one.

The PHP debugger in CodeLobster allows executing PHP scripts step by step moving through lines of code, one by one. You can add checkpoints, view the process of the work of loops, and monitor the values of variables while executing the script.

Those features are available in the free version, so we should definitely check what can we get in premium.

working with projects using FTP - in the CodeLobster premium version you can work with files that are actually on the server using a build-in FTP client. This is a great option to speed up the quick fixes and changes.

How does it work?

You self the file to edit, preview the results and then synchronize the changes, and voila, it works!

support for JS frameworks and libraries - even if you are a PHP developer sometimes you need to deal with the newest frontend frameworks to make UI. CodeLobster provides support for such libraries as jQuery, Node.js, AngularJS, BackboneJS, VueJS, and even MeteorJS in the premium version.

version control - working with CodeLobster you don’t have to leave your IDE to make a commit, so you can stay focused on what you actually do. The IDE has the possibility to connect with a version control system. In the free version, we can work with Git, but premium support also Mercurial and SVN.

PHP frameworks support - another great option coming with the paid version is support for PHP frameworks. You can find plugins for frameworks like CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Laravel, Phalcon, Smarty, Symphony, Twin, and Yii as plugins.

plugins for CMS - PHP CMSes are quite common, and there are a lot of projects on the internet on WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or Magenta. To work with them more easy premium versions of CodeLobster bring plugins for each of them.

Every framework supported by premium CodeLobster can be downloaded and installed without disturbing you in coding.

How much does it cost?

A lot of PHP dedicated IDEs available on the market are rather expensive. That’s why knowing all the CodeLobster features, we may assume, this tool can cost a fortune. Happily, there is a positive surprise, because you can get CodeLobster for free.

Of course, there is a premium paid version, which right now costs $59.95 with a 25% discount. With the premium version, you can get about 10 advanced features, that will speed up your PHP coding. You can also get about 17 additional plugins to help you with using frameworks like AngularJS, Bootstrap, or WordPress.

The upgrade to the premium version is a good idea. Especially that for the price you get the possibility of activation on three different devices and one year of free updates. You can also buy additional years of updates for $19.95.

Free vs premium version

Let’s take a look, what we can get for free and paid version of CodeLobster IDE.

On the image below, you can see, what features are free, and which require an additional premium version, and which plugins will come with paid CodeLobster IDE.

Lobster IDE review summary

Let’s summarize, CodeLobster IDE is dedicated to PHP developers who are working daily on building websites. It is a free tool so everyone can try the basic version of CodeLobster IDE. And if you like, how it speeds up your coding, makes you focused on what you actually have to do, you can check out the professional version. It is definitely in a good price comparing to competitors.

CodeLobster seems to provide everything that developers need to work efficiently and create a good quality code. Rich code editor, PHP debugger, working with online files with built-in FTP client, version control system, multiple frameworks and CMS support, and many more. It’s also worth remembering about easy setup, and multiple languages support.

I hope the review was interesting, and you are ready to try out CodeLobster IDE, as I already did.

This is sponsored article and thanks for the CodeLobster company for providing as access to IDE for testing. More information about them you can find at CodeLobster IDE

Thank you for reading,
Anna from Duomly

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