Codelobster IDE – Free PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript editor – Review

Codelobster IDE – Free PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript editor – Review An in-depth review of Codelobster, a new Integrated Development Environment for PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files

If you are a seasoned developer, you most likely already know what an IDE is: however, for the sake of those readers who never touched a single line of code, we’ll briefly summarize the concept. In computing, IDE is an acronym for Integrated Development Environment: in a nutshell, a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. A standard IDE normally consists of three major elements: a source code editor , a build engine (or equivalent building automation tools), and a debugger . Most modern IDEs have also other cool features, such as intelligent code completion mechanisms ( IntelliSense ), shortcuts, syntax highlighting, and other cool add-ons to ease the overall experience of their developers.

In this post we’ll talk about one of the most interesting – yet underestimated – IDE released in the latest few years: Codelobster, a portable, multi-platform development environment made for PHP yet also supporting HTML, CSS and JavaScript languages. As developers, we went through a full test-drive – from installation to coding and, last but not least, building.

Multi-Platform approach

A good IDE has to be multi-platform and Codelobster makes no exceptions: both the free and professional editions come with native Windows, MacOS and Linux binaries: for this review we used the screenshots of the Windows port, however we also tried the Linux build which offered the same look and feel and overall experience.

Installing

Installing Codelobester is just as easy as any other software: you just have to visit the official download page from the Codelobster website and pick the version you want to try:

Codelobster IDE– the free edition, with all the basic features active and no expiration time.

We’ll compare the two edition’s features later on. For the purpose of this test-drive, we just picked up the Codelobster IDE free edition 1.5.1, released on February 28, 2019, which was the latest version at the time of writing.

The installation wizard is pretty standard, you’ll just have to accept the End-User Agreement and hit Next a couple times. You’ll also get the chance to choose which File Types to open with Codelobster (the suggested extensions are .php, .js, .php5, .inc, .xml, .xsl and .module), the color scheme to use and the components/features you want to use:

The setup wizard will also install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redristibutable package, unless it’s already present on the system.

Main Window

Once the installed ends, the wizard will give you the chance to immediately run Codelobster. After you hit YES, the main window of the IDE will appear in all its glory:

As we can see, the main GUI is splitted in multiple sections.

In the topmost sectionthere’s a standard Menu, followed by some customizable Toolbars.

The overall look and feel loosely reminds us the most recent installments of Visual Studio / Visual Studio Code, which is indeed a good thing! This could be great to attract the typical ASP.NET developer, who could have issues in using Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code when working with PHP as both the Microsoft IDEs don’t natively support that language.

Text Editor

One of the most defining things of any IDE undoubtely is the Text Editor, which is where most of the developer work takes place. Codelobster’s text editor is natively packed out with the following features:

• Powerful Syntax Highlighting: it highlights the syntax and gives hints for tags, functions and their parameters, even with files that contain mixed content (HTML + PHP + CSS).
• Auto-Completion function, which greatly speeds up the programmer’s work and minimizes the chances of coding errors and typos.
• Highly Customizable interface with several visual styles.

Debugger

The built-in PHP debugger allows you to execute PHP scripts step by step, moving through the lines of code using the standard F5 (debug) – F10 (step over) – F11 (step into) function keys: the GUI allows the developer to assign breakpoints and monitor the values of all variables using the Locals and Watch windows (bottom panel) during the execution of the script.

We tested the debugger, together with the text editor, against one of our biggest PHP project – the Myst.it website, which features more than 150.000 lines of PHP code splitted between ~ 20.000 files. The debugger worked really well, giving our best developers a nice experience: we’re talking about experienced guys used to work with Visual Studio and PHP Tools, therefore they know what a good GUI and development IDE actually are. however, they were really happy and positively surprised by the Codelobster environment and had no issue in working with it.

Version Control

The professional version of CodeLobster IDE supports the following Version Control Systems:

We tried to configure Git without significative issues. The first thing to do is to configure the Git executable path:

Right after that, the Git commands features will appear on the File Explorer contextual menu, accessible by right-clicking on any file or folder:

Most of the SCM preferences can be configured in the Tools > Preferences > IDE > HotKeys > VCS:

Additional Features

Here are some useful function which got our attention, as they cannot be found in most IDEs:

• Pair highlighting of parentheses and tags : the text editor will instantly notice (and warn you) if there are missing opening or closing parentheses/tags.
• Highlighting and collapsing of blocks, selections and code snippets: another great feature of Visual Studio, which we gladly found here as well.
• Code Validator for PHP, HTML and CSS which identifies syntax errors in expressions, declarations and cycles (PHP), as well as names/attribute errors (HTML, CSS): sadly, this feature is now available only on the professional version.

Supported Systems

The program works on the following operation systems: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Mac OS, Linux, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian.

Compare Editions

Here’s the full features breakdown of the Free Version compared to the Professional Version, taken from the official site.

Abilities	Free Version	Professional version
HTML editor	V	V
HTML code inspector	V	V
CSS editor	V	V
JavaScript editor	V	V
PHP editor	V	V
PHP debugger	V	V
Advanced features	Free Version	Professional version
FTP/SFTP support	–	V
SQL manager	–	V
Version Control Systems	–	V
Code validator	–	V
Code snippets	–	V
Code formatting	–	V
SASS and LESS	–	V
Split Window, Compare	–	V
Node.js support	–	V
Other: sorting, converting	–	V
Additional plug-ins	Free Version	Professional version
AngularJS plug-in	–	V
BackboneJS plug-in	–	V
Bootstrap plug-in	–	V
CakePHP plug-in	–	V
CodeIgniter plug-in	–	V
Drupal plug-in	–	V
EmberJS plug-in	–	V
JQuery plug-in	–	V
Joomla plug-in	–	V
Laravel plug-in	–	V
Magento plug-in	–	V
MeteorJS plug-in	–	V
Phalcon plug-in	–	V
Smarty plug-in	–	V
Symfony+Twig plug-ins	–	V
VueJS plug-in	–	V
WordPress plug-in	–	V
Yii plug-in	–	V

Conclusion

Codelobster IDE really impressed us for its nice set of features, the user-friendly GUI and the sleek window design, which is clearly inspired from other top-grade IDEs. Given all this, we can only recommend it: the free edition itself is good enough for small-to-medium PHP/HTML projects, while the professional version might be a good choice if you need the advanced features or the language-specific plugins.

Free PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript Code Editor – CodeLobster IDE

It doesn’t matter how much experience you have in the programming field, you always need a powerful and best source code editor for your coding purpose. A reliable and easy to use IDE (integrated development environment) plays a vital role while developing any kind of websites more conveniently and peacefully.

Nowadays, there are countless of code editors and IDE for web development to achieve that purpose. But there are only very few free code editors and PHP IDE editors available in the market that has almost all latest and advanced features needed in the development of any PHP application.

(Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and images. I earn advertising/referral fees if you make a purchase by clicking them. There is no extra cost to you. See our full disclosure here. )

If you are in the pursuit of finding the best coding IDE editor so that you can improve your coding speed and work efficiency without getting any error then we suggest you try out CodeLobster which is a portable IDE absolutely free with all the standard features.

CodeLobster IDE is a multifunctional cross-platform PHP IDE which has almost all standard features other modern IDEs have. It allows fast and productive development of any PHP application by providing amazing functions like PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript highlighting, advanced PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript autocomplete, a powerful PHP debugger, context and dynamic help, a code validator, a SQL manager and much more.

This free portable PHP IDE allows you to easily edit PHP, HTML, CSS and JavaScript files, it highlights the syntax and gives hints for tags, functions and their parameters. CodeLobster editor is quite capable of dealing with all those files that contain mixed contents.

When you insert PHP code in your HTML template, then this free PHP IDE editor correctly highlights both HTML tags and PHP functions. The same function applies to CSS and JavaScript code, which is contained in HTML files.

The auto-completion function of this editor is well-appreciated by everyone because it exceedingly speeds up the programmer’s work and reduces the possibility of errors.

• HTML autocomplete: Autocompletes the tags, attributes for a current tag, closing tags.

• CSS autocomplete: Autocompletes the style property names and values.

• JavaScript autocomplete: Autocompletes the keywords, DOM elements, and their properties.

• PHP Advanced autocomplete: Autocompletes the classes, variables, functions, constants, and keywords.

Along with the PHP, CodeLobster IDE provides contextual help on all supported programming languages (Drupal, Smarty, Twig, WordPress, Joomla, JQuery, CodeIgniter, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AngularJS, CakePHP, Facebook, Laravel, Phalcon, Symfony, Yii).

The editor uses the most up to date documentation at this moment, downloading it from the official sites. So, users can instantly get a description of any HTML tag, CSS attribute, PHP or JavaScript function just by pressing the F1 key.

PHP Debugger is also a very essential component in this free PHP IDE editor. The built-in PHP debugger provides you the option to you to execute PHP scripts step by step, sequentially moving through the lines of code. You can easily assign checkpoints, view the process of the work of loops, and nicely monitor the values of all variables during the execution of the script.

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Table of Contents:

Other Useful Functions and Features of the CodeLobster IDE:

⭐ A pair highlighting of parentheses and tags. This highlighting feature helps to check code for errors, as it immediately highlights all mismatched enclosing characters in a special color. With the pair highlighting feature, you will never have to calculate parentheses or quotation marks, the IDE editor will take care of it.

⭐ Highlighting of blocks, selection and collapsing of different code snippets, bookmarks to facilitate navigation on all the edited file, recognition and building of the complete structure of every PHP projects. All these functions make certain of achieving every task smoothly with projects of any scale.

⭐ The editor supports 17 different users interface languages (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, Turkish).

⭐ The latest CodeLobster IDE is a multi-platform version and it is absolutely free. The program works perfectly on all these following operating systems: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Mac OS, Linux, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Mint.

If you are impressed with the interesting features and functions of the CodeLobster IDE’s free version then you will be amazed to see the additional features of its professional version.

Professional Version of CodeLobster IDE

Since nowadays most of the sites and applications are developed using various CMS’s and frameworks. In that case, the more advanced professional version will be extremely beneficial for you.

The professional version of CodeLobster IDE provides the programmer with even more standard features.

For example, you have an opportunity to work with projects on a remote server with the use of the built-in FTP client. You can edit the selected files, preview the results and then synchronize the changes with the files on the hosting.

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The Professional Version Includes Various Powerful Plug-ins:

. Fully implemented support for JavaScript libraries, such as jQuery, Node.js, AngularJS, BackboneJS, EmberJS, VueJS, and MeteorJS plug-in.

. A comprehensive set of extensions that help to work with all PHP frameworks – CakePHP, CodeIgniter, Laravel, Phalcon, Smarty, Symfony, Twig and Yii plug-ins.

. Plugins for working with the most popular CMS – Drupal, Joomla, Magento, and WordPress.

. Also, CodeLobster IDE editor has additional plug-ins for Bootstrap.

The best thing is the editor allows you to download and install any framework directly from the program without being distracted from the main tasks.

If you feel interested in the professional version of CodeLobster IDE then you need to know, the program offers 30 days of trial periods so that you can use and get satisfied with its features before you buy.

Right now, the Professional version costs $79.95 for 3 activations on different devices and 1-year free upgrades. And the future updates cost only $19.95 per 1 year.

In general, for a year of work, our team had no complaints against this free PHP IDE editor. CodeLobster IDE works fast, does not hang and allows us to work even with large PHP projects.

After having a look at all the listed features of this free cross-platform IDE for PHP/HTML/CSS/JavaScript development, you can say, Codelobster IDE is an ideal selection for both beginner and professional web developers.

You can download CodeLobster IDE from the official website http://codelobster.com/.

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Free PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript Code Editor – CodeLobster IDE