Juan Rivera submitted some information to us recently about the release of the latest version of VS.PHP, the PHP IDE for Visual Studio, now in version 2.3.

Key features are:

• Support for remote server projects. Edit remote files like they were local
• Support for Windows Vista, Visual Studio SP1
• Support for Ftp over SSL

VS.Php 2.3 comes as a plug-in for Visual Studio 2005 or as a standalone edition.

You can get complete information on this new update from the press release posted on the software's official website.

In this new post on the JSLabs blog, Justin Silverton shares his top five PHP tools that he percieves as invaluable for any developer out there.

The list is made up of:

• Crimson Editor
• VS.php
• ez_sql/ez_results - mysql wrapper library
• Smarty Template Engine mysql gui bundle 5.0

With the exception of the VS.php utiliy, all of the rest are free to use as you see fit. He briefly describes each, including why he thinks they are invaluable.