On the SitePoint PHP blog today Kevin Yank takes a look at a recent version of the NetBeans IDE (version 6.5) that comes bundled with improved PHP support.

Long dismissed as a "toy Java IDE", NetBeans - Sun's open source Integrated Development Evironment (IDE)-has really grown up in recent years. No longer is it just for Java, either: for web developers, NetBeans 6.5 now supports Ruby and PHP out of the box. Surprisingly, that support is so good that it now compares favourably to more established competitors like Eclipse, Komodo IDE, and Zend Studio.

He mentions the built-in/user-defined auto-complete the has built in as well as code templates, support for phpdoc documentation blocks, and other functionality for helping with Javascript, HTML and CSS.