Finally, I released my extension for Google Chrome called PHP Ninja Manual (Ninja - because I like Avinash Kaushik'sblog and he always call people who are very skilled in something as "Ninjas"). I was always lazy to open PHP documentation every time I had to look at some method definition and its parameters so I made this extension which is actually preparsed official PHP manual available instantly in a popup window.

You can see a screenshot of it in action here including the auto-complete searching and the example of the function's summary details. If you try it out and have feedback, go over to the forum for it and leave your comments.

On the episode 12 of the Lately in PHP podcast, Manuel Lemos and Ernani Joppert discuss the latest developments and what is still stalling the progress of the developments needed to make PHP 5.4 happen.

They also have a bit of discussion about which browser is better for development - Chrome or Firefox (and the places Chrome might be lacking). You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page player or by downloading the mp3 to listen at your convenience.

For those using the DBG debugger for PHP development, this minimal extension provides a convenient way to initiate debugging and profiling sessions. The most likely users will be anyone using Nusphere's PhpED. This commercial PHP IDE includes a robust, up-to-date, and full-featured DBG debugger. [...] Installation, configuration, and use is quick and simple. While you can configure the clienthost, port, and session ID entries of the Options dialog, this is not required.

The extension makes it as simple as one click to start and stop the debugging process that will watch round trip requests and catch errors to allow DBG to provide things like backtraces, work through the script step by step.

Years ago I wrote about a Firefox extension that allows you to start an Xdebug debugging session by clicking on an icon in Firefox' status bar. For some unexplained reason, this extension is no longer available through Firefox' addon-site. [...] There are now a few other browser extensions that do the same thing.

He lists three new extensions that can most of what you'd need to keep your testing going - easy Xdebug, Xdebug enabler (for Chrome) and this blog post with a pure Javascript method done with bookmarklets.

Since i have not yet seen an official extension for chrome (or i have not looked hard enough), i created one so i don't have to switch back to Firefox all the time, while I wait for the official extension. It only has the basic functionality (debug, debug next, profile and some configuration options) and it probably has some bugs and quirks, but it functions fine for me.

You can download this toolbar from here and if you have issues installing it, you might check out this post on the Zend Forums.