From: Henri Bergius <henri.bergius@nemein.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: PHPmole: Free development environment for Midgard and PHP Date: 04 Mar 2002 17:08:37 +0200 Just to ensure you received this one... PHPmole: Free development environment for Midgard and PHP HELSINKI, HONG KONG Feb 28th 2002 -- This is a first look to Alan Knowles' new Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Midgard. PHPmole aims to provide the free software world with a web development environment comparable to DreamWeaver and MS Visual Studio, with additional content management functionalities. Unlike most Midgard applications and development tools, PHPmole is a native client-side program designed for the the GNOME desktop environment. Being a native application, it can offer its users with a more rich and user-friendly interface, plus easy connectivity with other desktop software. However, this also means that it needs to be installed on the client machine instead of running it from the server via a regular browser. The system works also on KDE and other desktops if the required GNOME libraries are present. PHPmole offers a quite impressive set of features for developing Midgard applications. This includes class browser, debugger, HTML editor, syntax highlighting, autocompletion and context-sensitive help with integrated function reference. PHPmole communicates with the remote Midgard server using an XML-based transport layer, and supports multiple servers. While PHPmole could be used for developing any PHP applications, it offers many additional niceties for Midgard developers. All native Midgard data types are supported with specialized editor components, and the system also supports uploading file attachments using drag-and-drop. With these features, PHPmole can easily be used as the main administration and development interface for Midgard systems. The integrated HTML editor enables it to be used also as a content management interface for Midgard-based web sites. While similar functionality has been available using Nadmin Studio, PHPmole finally brings it to Linux and Unix desktops. PHPmole has been implemented using the PHP-GTK GUI toolkit, and requires a recent versions of GNOME, PHP and PHP-GTK to run. As these are not yet available in most distributions, getting PHPmole to work requires some effort. Luckily the steps required are documented fairly well on the PHPmole web site. Most of the problems are in PHP-GTK installation, and are likely to be sorted out in near future. Currently PHPmole is in release 1.2.2, and is still under active development. Most of the interface works reliably, but the system still seems to crash and hang every now and then. Users testing the application are adviced to use it only with non-production systems. PHPmole is also available for Windows. However, due to some missing parts of GNOME infrastructure for that platform, the HTML editor and the syntax highlighting editor are not supported. More information PHPmole is an Integrated Development Enviroment for developing web applications with PHP and the Midgard application server. In simple words PHPmole is Dreamweaver crossed with MS Visual Studio, with a Content Management and Image tools thrown into the bag. Alan Knowles, PHPmole developer alan@akbkhome.com PHPmole site http://www.akbkhome.com/Projects/phpmole-IDE/ Screenshots http://www.akbkhome.com/Projects/phpmole-IDE/Screenshots/ PHPmole on SourceForge http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmole-ide/ Midgard is a freely-available solution for managing content on web and WAP services. It is also a toolkit for building dynamic applications to power eBusiness and Information Management processes. Midgard has been built and is actively maintained by a global group of software professionals working together in this Open Source project. Midgard site: http://www.midgard-project.org/