Dennis sent in a submission about a toolbar he's created to work with the Zend Debugger (in an extension) for the Chrome Browser:

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.

This new tutorial from DevShed takes a look at the XDebug debugging tool for PHP and how the xdebug_call_function method allows for even more flexibility in your testing experience.

The Xdebug extension comes equipped with many other functions, however, that allow you to debug PHP applications more deeply. Therefore, in this second article of the series, I'll be discussing how to use another useful function included with the extension, called "xdebug_call_function()," which as its name suggests, can be utilized for keeping track of the functions called by a PHP script.

They start with a look back at two of the other xdebug functions - xdebug_call_file and xdebug_call_line - before showing how to use this new function (xdebug_call_function) to get the function that called your custom handler.

This new article from DevShed takes a look at one of the more useful PHP tools out there for finding problems and holes in your scripts - the XDebug extension.

If you program at all, you understand the necessity of debugging. Fortunately, depending on the language in which you program, you can find an assortment of tools to help you with this task. One very good debugging tool for PHP is the XDebug extension. This seven-part series will reveal its capabilities and help you add it to your programmer's toolbox.

This first part of the series looks (briefly) at getting it installed and creating some test code to show included files and grab the line number where the error occurred.

Ian Selby has posted a look at the newly released PHP support by the Aptana software:

Aptana (yes, this is a shameless plug) released version 1.0 of its PHP support yesterday, and it is something that you should definitely check out. Prior to working at Aptana, I was an avid user of Zend Studio, and Coda, simply because those were the best PHP IDEs as far as I was concerned. Over the past few months, however, we've been hard at work on the PHP support for Aptana Studio, and I can say with much confidence that it is in every way as good as every other PHP IDE out there, and better than some in other respects.

He talks about new features like content assist (adding userland code to the automatic completion), completion of functions with parameters already filled in and a PHP preview server and debugger built right in. You can get more information on the Aptana website.

Software company BlueStatic will be releasing their native Mac debugger, MacGDBp tomorrow (June 18th) to the community.

Here's more information from their press release:

Blue Static today is announcing the release date of MacGDBp, a native Cocoa application that allows Web developers to debug their PHP applications. The tool makes use of the Xdebug (http://www.xdebug.org) PHP extension that provides remote debugging functionality. Blue Static will be releasing the software under the GNU GPL version 2 on the morning of Tuesday, 17 June 2008.

The interface for the application is modeled after the XCode product from Apple to help integrate it more fully into the OS look and feel. It will require Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard to run and screenshots of the tool can be found here and here.

In a new post on his blog, Guy Harpaz answers a few questions people have been having about the debugger protocol that the PHP IDE project uses.

Debugging a PHP application or a PHP web server requires connectivity between an IDE and a Debugger engine (a PHP module which is installed on the web server). The debug protocol defines this connection. [...] When the Eclipse Foundation approved the PHP IDE project, Zend Studio's debug protocol was opened source and was chosen to be the debug protocol of the PHP IDE project.

He goes through why they made the choice, touches a bit on the security aspect of the two debugging protocols he mentioned (DBGp and Zend Studio's) as well as their common methods for output.

As mentioned on the Zend Developer Zone, Jaybill McCarthy has written up a Blog post about ten of the PHP myths that are common on the web and the facts that dismiss them.

I am a PHP developer. Maybe even a halfway decent one. As such, I often find myself engaged in conversations on the subject of web application development in general and PHP in particular. I am continually flustered by the myths, half-truths and outright falsehoods that technical and non-technical people alike hold about this humble programming language.

Some of the points included in his "top ten" list are things like "PHP Encourages Sloppy Code", "PHP is slow because it's interpreted" and "PHP apps all look the same".

On the Zend Developer Zone today, Stefan Priebsch has written up an article introducing fellow developers to XDebug, a popular PHP debugging suite.

This article is the first installment of a five-part series of articles covering xdebug, a free and open source swiss army knife tool for PHP developers. xdebug is a PHP extension created by Derick Rethans, one of the PHP core developers. This week, we will show you how to install xdebug and introduce you to some of the basic features. In the subsequent parts of this article series, we will have a closer look at one of xdebug's main features, namely tracing, profiling, debugging, and code coverage.

In this first installment, he looks at installing the software (both on a unix-based system and on a Windows box) and how to turn it on to work with your web server. He also mentions some of the error output options including the "new and improved" var_dump call and the stack trace method to help you locate exactly where in the code the error's hidden.

The IBM developerWorks website has a new tutorial posted today covering the use of Zend's debugger tool to help find the issues with your applications:

A special application called a debugger probes running code, allowing you to suspend execution arbitrarily, examine objects, explore the call stack, and even change the value of a variable on the fly. Learn how to use a debugger to squash bugs in your PHP code.

They look at the history of debugging (briefly) and show how to get the debugger installed and working with your PHP server. They have the instructions for a Mac OS X machine, but the setup is pretty similar for any other operating system. Screenshots and example code are all over the place, guiding you towards their test - debugging a simple application (making pizza).

Derick Rethans has posted about the release of the latest version of XDebug - 2.0.2 - to his blog.

I just released Xdebug 2.0.2. This bugfix release addresses some issues that were introduced with the improved code coverage performance in Xdebug 2.0.1. There are a few other issues left, which will be addressed in a future version.

Fixes include correcting a crash on empty PHP files, a crash when including a file that doesn't exist, an issue with CLI error logging and the direction of the var_dump function call.