On Richard Davey's blog today, he has his first looks at one of the more popular PHP IDEs out there (and its latest version, none the less, version 5.0) - PHPEd from NuSphere.

"PhpED 5 is now available. It's the biggest release ever in our 7-year history, with all-new tools for PHP code folding, embedded Mozilla browser, a powerful database form wizard, a completely new look and feel and so much more."

Alllrighty, I'll have me some of that! I logged in, grabbed the new version, backed-up all of my config settings, and installed with fingers crossed. Here is what I've found so far, along with the answer to the million dollar question - are the new features worth the upgrade fee?

He goes through some of the "more needed" features that a lot of developers look for - code folding, a nice, clean, easy to work with interface, and some new features to make it worth the upgrade. Of course, nothing is perfect, so there are a few recommendations he makes - versioning support (CVS and Subversion), the ability to locally stage files, and a useful search and replace.