HTMLPad & Rapid PHP

[mikeopacic]

Hi,

I've just purchased HTMLPad and like it very much. I've also downloaded the trial of Rapid PHP and see that much of the funtionality of HTMLPad is incorporated in Rapid PHP. Since I work in PHP quite a lot I might have been better off with Rapid PHP but I'm not complaining since HTMLPad costs so little anyway - great value for money.

One or two observations:

Rapid PHP does not seem to have a PHP equivalent of the HTML Reference... & CSS Reference... options on the Help menu - a rather strange ommision on a PHP specific editor - or have I missed something?

I have been using PHP Expert Editor from Ankord up until now & it does have one feature which I miss with your products, it has a built-in server and this makes it possible to test run any PHP script anywhere on your system - the current PHP file's folder is treated as the document root of the buit-in server - no need to install a server and use for aliases to make it all work locally. Will this capabilitybe introduced into your products at any stage?

Will a revamped version of Rapid PHP be released when the HTMLPad 2005 product is released or will that be much later.

Last of all I believe that since I have just registered HTMLPad 2004 I will get HTMLPad 2005 as a free upgrade - is that correct?

Thanks for the great work you are doing and the excellent value for money products you are producing.

Cheers

Mike

[Karlis]

Thank you for your post!

Everybody who purchased HTMLPad in Febryary or later will receive version 2005 for free.

Rapid PHP is indeed the same HTMLPad but with additional PHP coding features added.

There will be Rapid PHP 2005 and it will be released simoultaneously with HTMLPad 2005 and some other editions.

Your idea about built-in web server is great. Probably will be added in 2005 but not at the very beginning. If there are any other great ideas in your mind, please feel free to tell about it.

[mikeopacic]

Thanks for you reply Karlis,

I have now registered Rapid PHP 2004 too and I am looking forward to the 2005 upgrade

I have, for now, set up Rapid PHP to use the free Abyss Web Server and by using the Web servers 'aliases' along with Rapid PHP's 'preview mapping' feature I have virtually achieved the convenience of the built-in web server of Expert PHP Editor that I mentioned.

Once I have been using Rapid PHP for a while I will no doubt make one or two suggestions for improvements - don't we all

I have noticed one issue which you may or may not have addressed in the 2005 versions. The built-in preview pane does not get keyboard focus properly unless you first click the mouse somewhere in the preview pane.

To test this create any simple HTML page and click on internal Preview - now before you do anything else type some characters. The characters do not appear on the Preview page (as they shouldn't of course) BUT, when you switch back to Code Editor view, they do appear in the code wherever the cursor was left at the time.

This is annoying because you can accidentally mess up your code without realising it at the time. I noticed this first when I created a simple page with a form and forgot to click in the form text input box before starting to type.

The problem does not of course apply with external browser Preview.

Cheers

[Karlis]

Will take a look, thanks!

[ost]

yes. most of us dont want iis and its problems on our machines to test php
i would like to turn off preview completely. i can test live.

[Karlis]

Built in web server sounds nice. As soon as I get to the version 6.2 (currently working on 6.0), I'll perform feasibility and cost analysis and most likely it will be possible for version 6.2 (in summer).

[Guest]

make it an addon for optional

[Karlis]

Of course such features must be optional