There is a new feature that allows navigate to CSS class or id selector declaration from CLASS or ID attribute of an HTML tag. When you go over a usage of  a class or id selector with mouse pointer and the CTRL key is hold, then the selector is change to a link. The link navigates to the declaration. 

The picture below displays the navigation from td tag in an HTML file to the CSS file, where the header_top class selector is defined.

When there are more declarations that fit the selector name, than a popup window is displayed, where you can select the file. The red (unrelated) mark means that there is no direct connection between the usage and the declaration.

As you can see the features works in HTML files and PHP as well.

Hi, today it will be again a very short blog post about a feature we just added to the development version of NetBeans. Many of you requested this change so we hope that you will like this change:

The behavior should be as expected, it means that if one checks a directory, all folders and files underneath the directory are checked as well.

However, if anyone of you still prefer the current dialog (a "table"), start NetBeans with -J-Dnb.php.transfer.ui.table=true and leave a comment why do you think it's better, an option could be added for it (probably in Tools > Options > PHP).

That's all for today, as always, please test it and report all the issues or enhancements you find in NetBeans IssueZilla (component php, subcomponent FTP Support).

Another improvements that is based on your comments is code completion for colors in CSS rules. The code completion for color and background property offers now at first position an item that opens color chooser. 

There is a standard Java color chooser and when you select a color in the chooser, the color is completed. The chooser remembered last selected color and also the item in code completion has an icon (small square) with the last selected color.

The color chooser above is from Linux platform. On Mac and Windows machine the color chooser looks like on the picture below and it looks better. If there will be time, the standard Java color chooser component will be replaced with a custom component, that should be better for web developer purpose.

If you look at the first picture, there are black and gray color code completion items. The black color items are used in the edited file and the gray color items are colors that are used in other CSS files in the project.

In the same way works code completion for color and background property of a style in HTML and PHP files.

Today I don't continue in formatting posts:). I would like to mentioned the CSS code completion in html tags. It's new feature, that is also available in NetBeans 6.9 M1 build. Because the CSS files are now indexed, it allows to provide better support for CSS  in HTML and PHP files as well. The code completion is one of the visible benefit.

The picture above displays a page from WordPress project, where you can see code completion for class attribute of div tag. The code completion window offers all selectors for classes, that were found in the project. A selector in code completion window can have two colors. The green color means that the selector is defined inside the file or in a file which is referred by this one or the style is already used in the file. Selectors that have gray color are available in the project, but don't meet the condition that is mentioned above.

Similarly the code completion is available for id attribute of HTML tags, where the appropriate selectors are offered.

The milestone 1 of NetBeans 6.9 was published. It's available here. Visit the NetBeans 6.9 New and Noteworthy page to learn more about all the new features and enhancements available in this milestone release.

The next  categories, where you can set up the formatting of PHP code is category Spaces. Currently there are implemented more then 40 options that are separated into six groups. All these options as other options, which were mentioned in previous posts about formatting are available in development builds (NetBeans 6.9). The formatting has to be tested properly, if you find a problem, please report it in our database or at least write as a comment here.

The first group Before Keywords defines spaces before a keyword that are usually after '}' char. By default all these properties are switched on. 

The second group Before Parentheses contains options that defines spaces before left parentheses. All options in this group are by default switch on except Method / Function Declaration and Method / Function Call.

The last group mentioned in this post is Before Left Braces. In this group you can define whether the formatting handles space between open brace and an element. All the properties in this group are switched on by default.

Continue the next time.

Another formatting category that you can find in PHP formatting setting is Blank Lines category. If you don't know how to obtain settings for PHP formatter, look at the first blog from the formatting series. This category define adding and deleting blank lines between different elements in the PHP code.

As you can see on the picture, user can set how many blank lines the formatter should insert before or after an elements. Property defining blank lines around a namespace declaration and use statement are PHP 5.3 specific.

On the picture are displayed all properties that influence the inserting blank lines during formatting and also the default values.  

The algorithm deletes blank lines in groups of use statements and class fields declarations. The picture on the right sight displays an example with fields, where on the left side is code before formatting and on the right sight is the same code after formatting.

There are two groups of fields, the first one contains $field1, $field2, $field3 and $field4 properties. As you can see all the blank lines within the group of fields are removed, except the line before PHP doc comment for $field4 property, where is inserted the number of lines that is set to as Before Field property.

The second group of fields contains  $field5 and $field6 properties.

Similar behavior is for Use. So the properties Before Use, After Use, Before Field and After Field set to number of lines inserted before / after a group of use statements or fields, not the individual occurrences.

If there are two elements subsequently in the code that the first defines one blank line after the element and the second defines one blank line before the element, then there are not inserted two lines between these elements, but only one. Similarly only the bigger number of lines is placed between the elements, if the number of blank lines after the first element is not equal to the number of blank lines before the second element. 

See the picture below. The After Namespace property defines one blank lines after a namespace and Before Use property set to two lines. So two blank lines are created between the namespace declaration and group of use statements. 

From the picture above should be clear the meaning of properties Before Namespace, After Namespace, Before Use and After Use. The meaning of the rest properties is displayed on the picture below. For better understanding every property is set to one. The lines in the formatted code have color of the property that influence the number of blank lines. A few lines has two colors, because both property are counted for the line according the algorithm that is mentioned above. 

As you can see there are properties that define blank lines around a class (Before Class and After Class), blank lines after the open brace after class declaration (After Class Header) and blank lines before the close brace in class body (Before Class End).

The properties Before Field and After Field were already mentioned.

The last properties defines blank lines around a function / method (Before Function and After Function) and also blank lines before the close brace in function / method body (Before Function End).  

The position of braces in PHP code can be set up in the PHP formatting setting, category Braces(select item Braces in the Category combo box). It's possible to set up separately position of the brace after class declaration, function or method declaration and for other statements.

There are three values -  Same Line, New Line and Preserve Existing  that can be set to. The default value is Same Line.

Based on the comments under this post the options for placing braces were changed. So this post is not relevant anymore and new information you can find here.

When you select PHP language in the formatting setting then in Category combo box you can select category Braces. The panel for this category contains only one combo box, where you can define the position of braces. There are three values -  Same Line, New Line and Preserve Existing. The default value is Same Line. See the picture.

 I'm not sure whether this one option is sufficient. Does someone have a requirement to offer more options for the braces? For example the Java formatting has options that allow to set different behavior for class declaration, methods declaration and other cases. Also it allows to set that  braces are indented on the new line.

Few weeks ago I wrote that I try to improve indentation engine and formatting for PHP files. Some improvements in the indentation engine were done during fixing NetBeans 6.8 and with this post I would like to start a discussion about formatting, which I try to improve during these days. In the development builds there are new categories for the PHP formatting options. Now are available categories for setting Tabs and Indents, Braces, Spaces and  Blank Lines.

User can modify behavior of the formatter in two levels. In Editor category -> Formatting tab in Options dialog (Tools -> Options) you can modify setting for PHP formatting. You should select PHP in the Language combo box, if you want to change PHP specific settings.

These global options influence the behavior for all PHP files, except the files belonging projects that use their own setting. So the PHP formatting can be also influence on the project level. In Project Properties dialog is Formatting category and you can decide, whether the project will use global options or the project specific options. Also you can easily reuse options from other project after click on Load from other project button. Like in the global options you should select PHP in the Language combo box, if you want to change behavior of the PHP formatting for the selected project. 

The first category is Tabs And Indents. The options Number of Spaces per Indent, Tab Size and Right Margin are common for all editors and by default the global setting is used. The check box Expand Tabs to Spaces is clear. By default it is checked and it means that the existing chars '\t' are replaced by the count of spaces that is defined as Tab Size property. Property Number of Spaces per Indent defines the maximum number of spaces that will be created after pressing TAB key to indent the source code.  When the check box Expand Tabs to Spaces is unchecked, then the defined number of spaces in Tab Size property is converted to the '\t' char. For this reason is good if you set Number of Spaces per Tab to an even multiple or divisor of Tab Size .  

The PHP specific options:

• Initial Indentation -  In files only with PHP code it defines number of spaces, that are placed at the beginning of every line (except the PHP delimiters <?php, <? and ?>). In files, where is HTML mixed with php, the Initial Indentation defines number of spaces from beginning of the PHP delimiter. 
• Continuation Indentation Size - If there is a long expression, which is on more lines, then the continuation of the expression is indented through this property.  
• Items in Array Declaration - It's similar to previous property, but for an array declaration.

It should be clear from this picture:

The next time I'm going to write about next category. Try the latest development build and suggest what else should be configurable. 

 

Hi, today it will be a very short blog post about a feature we just added to the development version of NetBeans. As the title says, this feature is Error Badges - what does it mean? If you have a PHP file with any error, this file can be easily recognized directly from Projects view. Have a look at the picture:

Please notice, that the badges are present not only in Projects view but also in the tab of the editor.

Right now, it's not decided yet whether this feature will be included in NetBeans 6.9 final because it is experimental and we need to know how well it works for you so any feedback from you, our users, is more than welcome.

That's all for today, as always, please test it and as said above, report all the issues or enhancements you find in NetBeans IssueZilla (component php, subcomponent Editor).

Hi all, today I would like to inform that we just added initial support for Zend framework. So, let's have a look at what is supported right now.

Of course, first of all it is a good idea to specify a path to Zend command line tool:

Next, we want to create a new project with Zend framework (please notice that the Zend framework files are currently not copied to the project, this is on our TODO list) :

The generated project can look like this:

Next, we would like to invoke some Zend commands, of course:

So, let's add an action to our Index controller:

We can review the result in the Output window - it's done!

Also, one can navigate from action to view and vice versa, similarly as for Symfony framework (just right click in a view or in an action and choose Navigate > Go to View/Action). 

That's all for today, as always, please test it and report all the issues or enhancements you find in NetBeans IssueZilla (component php, subcomponent Zend).

Today (a feew minutes ago) NetBeans 6.8 has been released and you can dowload it from the main page at netbeans.org site. 

I hope that it brings more better and usable support for web development, especially fro PHP developers. I woul like to thank everyone who helps us to improve the IDE.

NetBeans 6.8 is almost done and is going to be published very soon. You can watch a promo video about NetBeans 6.8 here. As you can see

Usually the new splash screen is one of the latest changes in the release repository. There is the final design of the splash screen.

I have played with the displaying file path or a part of the file path in the editor tab. I have created a small patch for CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other files that use CSL editor (HTML is not the case). I don't want to commit the patch to the repository, because it's a just experiment and the appropriate solution should cover all files and should be done in the editor infrastructure. The reason why I did this is to see the result and find out as much consequences as possible and also to hear your opinion.

If you want to try it, you should follow these instructions:

1. Download NetBeans RC2 in zip form (in the Platform combo box select OS Indenpendent Zip item).
2. Unzip the file somewhre in a ${unzip_dir} folder
3. Download this org-netbeans-modules-csl-api.jar and replace the original one in ${unzip_dir}/netbeans/ide12/modules/ folder.
4. In a command line go to in ${unzip_dir}/netbeans/bin folder
5. Run NetBeans with this command on a Linux machine:

   ./netbeans.sh --userdir /path/to/a/folder -J-Dcsl.editor.folder.level=2

   or on a Windows machine

   netbeans.exe --userdir d:\path\to\a\folder -J-Dcsl.editor.folder.level=2

In the picture bellow you can see the RC2 build which displays two levels of folders for the mentioned files in the editor tab.

The --userdir option is explain here. It's my recommendation to use it:). The more important option here is the second one (-J-Dcsl.editor.folder.level) that influence the way how the path is displayed in the editor tab.

The number (in my case 2) saying how many levels of parent folders of the file is displayed in the editor tab. If you set this option to -1, then full absolute path is displayed. In case that you set it to 0 or you don't set the option at all, the behavior is the default one - no additional information is displayed in the editor tab.

You can place also the option as a another default option into the netbeans.conf file in ${unzip_dir}/netbeans/etc/ folder.

On Friday, there was published the second release candidate of NetBeans 6.8. You can download the build here.

When we discussed the features for NetBeans 6.9, some people complain about slow scanning and editing. If this experience is based on NetBeans 6.7.1 (which had known performance problems), please try NetBeans 6.8 RC2. We believe the speed has improved significantly. If you still face performance problems with the release candidate build, please let us know the details and we will try hard to improve the performance for your scenario.

Probably the last tip  is the IDE status bar that could help you in situation, where you have opened more files with the same name. The status bar displays full file path of the selected file in the popup window that is displayed during switching between opened files in the editor through CTRL+TAB short cut.

I have also created four issues, the issue #178090 that explains the problem and is basically umbrella for three issues:

• #178091 - Display in title bar path for the edited file
• #178093 - Display in the window with open file list (CTRL+TAB) path of the selected file
• #178094 - Provide file navigator bar

If you have any comment about this issues, please write the comment directly into the issue. It's much better if it looks like that the issue is a voice of our users, then it looks like an idea of a NetBeans developer:).

Yesterday I wrote about option Synchronize Editor with Views and Carlos imentioned the shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+1 in his comment. The shortcut is active, when you are in the editor and selects the edited file in Projects view that obtain also focus. So the difference between Synchronize Editor with Views and this shortcut is that the focus is changed.

In similar way shortcut CTRL+SHIFT+2 works too, but it opens the Files view and selects the edited file there.

And CTRL+SHIFT+3 selects the edited file in the Favourite view. If the file is not in the Favorite view yet, then Add to Favorites dialog is opened. Then you can put directly the file to favorites or a selected folder.

There is one requirement to see a part of file path as name of tab of opened editor to simply recognized the file that is opened. Sure there is a tooltip, which shows the full path of the file, but the mouse has to be used to display the tooltip. This is mainly needed, when there are opened many files with the same name.

Although there is not such functionality yet, there is  Synchronize Editor with Views option that could help you. You can find it in View menu and if the item is checked, then in Project view and File view is automatically selected the file that is in the editor.

It doesn't correspond exactly to the requirement that is mentioned above, but it can help in some cases.

I will try to continue to answer your comments about planning features. I'm sorry if I will not answer your comment, it possibly should be because the similar question/issue was already answered or explained or simply I don't know how to answer. Also I would like to say again, if there will be enough resources, we would like to implements supports for all frameworks and almost all requirements which you wish. But the resources .... Simply we can not do miracles:(. On the other hand it's open source and if you feel strong enough in Java programming, you can help us, but this is another story.

I'm looking mainly for features from which the bulk users will have a benefit. This is why I'm asking about the web developer workflow and features, which can help to all web developers. It doesn't have to be PHP centric, developers of Java web applications or Ruby/JRuby can use them as well.

Sergio's comments:

2) Having an option that could be optimized website.
Which is responsible for optimizing all pages that are on site to remove comments, javascript, css, html, php, compact or compress the code in fewer lines to lower the weight of the.

Good suggestion. The JavaScript/CSS compressor is a part of this. It should be a part of building proces. Which also mean that the process has to be configurable.

3) A complete environment which is already integrated with Apache, PHP, MySQL, Xdebug, all in one package more complete.

A few month ago, we were thinking about creating a small image for Virtual Box, where the  Apache, PHP, MySQL, Xdebug and DTrace will be installed and worked out of the box. The image shouldn't be bigger than 300MB. Do you mean like this?

4) Power Wizard-create a profile with a template project, which has the directory structure of how each programmer to have on future projects. and that this project template can be backup for future installations.

Nice suggestion. I will talk with Tomas about this. 

5) Integrate the browser to the Zend Studio IDE and is

I'm sorry, I don't understand this.

CodioPHP's comment:

Generating class PHP, CRUD Application from a Database

Is it a part of the framework like Symfony, Zend, Cake PHP etc.? To implement this probably will be good for demos, but I don't see much benefit in real life. It's hard to maintain and I would say that is a duplication of the frameworks functionality.

Ido Green's comment:

0.Debugger + profiler - put xDebug and Facebook open source profiler (http://developers.facebook.com/xhprof/) that give you the options to get memory and not just cpu stats as integral part of netbean for php.
This is by far to most imprtant feature that no other open source IDE offer php developers.

I haven't look at the xhprof yet, but it's on top of my task list. We need evaluate this and see how it can be integrated into NetBeans.

1. If you could do something that will take the functionalty of findBug (from java) and will do some bug/security analysis to the php code in netbean it will be great. I know it's not a 'pure' IDE role but still - very important tool that the ide can offer its users.

I agree with you. It would be nice to  have such functionality. Possibly can be used some external program which does this. There are few of them. It's again question of priority and resources. We don't have it in plan for the next release, but it's on my radar.

Hans's and Marcos's comments:

Are you workmates? :) The performance was improved in NetBeans 6.8. There were fixed some bugs in this area and the impact of these fixes is significant. At least I hope:).

Kristian's comment:

I'm using the latest dev-version and I am currently experiencing problems the code templates. Sometimes the work sometimes they don't. General code completion (ctrl+space) seems to work a lot better now though.

Could you please file a bug for it. The best bug for is a reproducible bug. There were done some changes in the code templates and I can not guaranteed that there is not a bug.:(

Markus Wolff's comment:

Hmm, regarding the Javascript compression, what I'd really love to see is full integration for the Dojo Toolkit.

I'm with you on the same boat. I would like to have it as well. Unfortunately JavaScript support was in maintenance mode in NetBeans 6.8. I hope it will be better in the upcoming release. 

goofy's comment:

It would be cool to have a new projects tab more symfony oriented in place of files. Something to navigate more quickly between sform, model, module, plugins something like the navigator class but on all the project.

Although the Symfony support was started in Netbeans 6.8, I wouldn't say that is done. We are waiting for the feedback and we are hoping that we will heard suggestions like you wrote.

Another idea: a log viewer with different format like mysql apache symfony …

Yes !!!, this is my favorite as well. I already wanted this 5 years ago.  

And the possibility to have syntax coloration on php in json or json in php and an optionnal possibility to choose yourself your editor like in eclipse (hope it's not a dirty word ;) )

In NetBeans 6.8 I added support for PHP in YAML file. So I could add PHP support into JSON file. There are some implementation obstacles from JSON editor side and I need to look at this.

Chris's comment:

One really basic IDE feature is just to be able to right click on a file (or its tab) and select "Open the Containing Folder" of that file!

I have to admit that I try to use mouse as minimal as I can, but the functionality is there. If you have open a file in the editor and the editor has the focus, then

• CTRL + SHIFT + 1 opens the folder with the file in the Project tab
• CTRL + SHIFT + 2 opens the folder with the file in the Files tab
• CTRL + SHIFT + 3 opens the folder with the file in the Favorite tab

Jeff Dickey's comment:

Rather than support ZF or Yii or Kohana (what I use) or JoeBobsUltimateFrameworkâ„¢ as a standalone feature, how about doing some thinking about what is needed to support ANY PHP framework, publish the spec, and throw a couple of reference implementattions (for the midsize one, I'd guess) into the tin with 6.9?

I'm rally glad that you wrote this. This is exactly what I have talked to managers. Try to create a platform for frameworks support. I'm trying to fight for this. The question is who will be the target user of such platform. It will be an experienced java programmer. Probably not, because for such developer everything is there. The NetBeans API. So this platform has to be targeted to non java programmers or not very experienced programmers.

Comment from 85.181.221.51:

Display full path in title menu. May be optional. I don't understand why it is not implemented. I know there is a hint, but you must move mouse and it is not productive. I just want to quick look at title bar and know what I'm editing right know. index.php is not really informative!!!

I have discussed this requirement with the editor infrastructure guy almost one year ago. It started to be actual with the support for PHP. I need to talk with him one more time:)

Denyerec's comment:

- CSS colourpicker is trivial but a huge timesaver, TopStyle Pro does it perfectly, allowing autocomplete of recently used colour codes followed by all colourcodes in the document, followed by a "Choose colour" option that throws up a colourpicker that interacts with anything onscreen.

The color chooser in code completion is already mentioned and I would like to have it as well. A few improvements in CSS editing is already planned for NetBeans 6.9, I will try to convinced the engineer to make this chooser as well.

- Using dark theme with white foreground text renders the "Find instances" pane unreadable due to white-on-beige writing. Again trivial but annoying.

Just file a simple bug. I can fix it. At least in the PHP editor. 

- "Copy file to network on save". You can have a file automatically FTP'd up on save, but you can't just copy it to another location on your hard disk. When working I will often have to dev from a local folder (SVN checkout) and then copy files over to the webroot to test in the browser. Being able to specify a "local mirror" which will be updated with any changed files on run/save would be very useful. (And no, I can't just move my web root, it's a shared environment...)

Are you working with both copies at the same time? It would be solution to create two run configurations and switch between the local and the remote configuration, when you need?

- Conditional breakpoints

This is really missing.  The obstacle for this so far was that there was a bug in XDebug that when you tried to evaluate an expression, which doesn't exist in the code, then the XDebug crashes. Until this bug will not be fixed, we cannot introduce the conditional breakpoint, because then the XDebug will crash in the bulk of cases.

Full featureset for opened file based on file extension. What do I mean by this? Currently it seems that to get code completion, etc etc, you have to create a project , add the file to it and then open the file. This means I can't use netbeans to make simple modifications to standalone scripts without first creating a project, etc. I use notepad++ if I'm making single or small-scale edits simply because there's no sense creating projects for those thing. If Netbeans could do more when you simply open a single PHP file in it (IE create a simple, memory-based project rather than files on disk, or even temp files with default settings) that would be a huge help.

You should be able to open a simple file in NetBeans. Or open the file from your OS with NetBeans. Sure is not full featureset. For example for the full code completion you need to index the include path. Without a project there is not an include path so how the ide should recognize the include path.

gawan's comment:

1. Last days I found "Zen Coding: A Speedy Way To Write HTML/CSS Code" (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/11/21/zen-coding-a-new-way-to-write-html-code/ - look at screencast). This is excellent idea how to improve HTML coding. Full support for netbeans would be great idea.

Need to look at this. I haven't seen it yet.

2. Everybody has their excellent, super, great framework ;) It is impossible to made support for all framework. But better could be help PHP developers develop support by self. If you made some tool or "Meta Framework" for PHP developers it would be great. PHP developer will only define some special properties for his framework e.g.:
- relation between controller and template
- how looks variable in template
- list of possible template functions etc.

Agreed, I already wrote about this. We already talked with Radek about an XML configuration file, where people can define context and which items should appear in code completion in this context.

Comment from 84.134.21.170:

A Sync-Button in the IDE to sync Projects Web-Directory with the content of the Server would be simple and great!

Thanks for the tip.

Comment from Levente Hollo:

- I would love to use Prado framework support in Netbeans. This is really good framework, this has a big community. One year ago, you started to implement this support (http://forums.netbeans.org/topic1202.html) Please, please continue!!!

I would like to continue. I need to find a time. I have now two small boys and you can imagine that I have really little spare time:(.

- I would like to see a better WSDL support, creating a WSDL form a PHP class, and creating a PHP class from a WSDL file. There are several WSDL generators in the web, like these:
http://www.mehtanirav.com/2009/01/28/wsdl-to-php-generate-php-code-from-a-wsdl-file/

There was already such requirement. So you are not alone. I will talk with engineer, who take car about WS. 

Vitex's comment:

The original comment is in Czech. Vitex wants a functionality, which will disable all breakpoint at once that allow to execute the application and turn on the breakpoints when he needs.

There is Breakpoint window where are actions Enable All Breakpoints and Disable All Breakpoints. Is it exactly what you want?

Jasmo's comment:

I would like to see some better diff software, i'm not that pleased with current diff system with Netbeans. Normally i use winmerge, but it does not work correctly with netbeans if i assign it as external diff program.

Please write an enhancement to our issue database for VCS team. 

Anton's comment:

It would be nice if I could instruct the ide how to handle the flexy templates (even without syntax highlighting I would like to prevent netbeans telling me about errors in my html code which are not erros but flexy templates) like <p style="{mystyle:h}"> </p>)

Basically has to be implemented at least the embedding language provider for such delimiters (part of the framework support). 

An other issue in NB is the missing trac support... yes there is cubeon which works but cubeon goes its own way: It is managed completly different than bugzilla etc.

Try NetBenas 6.8. There is integrated support for Bugzilla and Jira. I hope it works.

Comment from 84.134.21.170:

Instead of supportin dozens of Frameworks (Zend,Cake,Symfony) what about Templates for modules of most commen CMS Systems. Modules for Joomla, Modules for Wordpress, Modules for Typolight... that would be great too!!!

There is a lot of things, which can be done in this area. And it's easy to do it. My problem is tat I don't know much these systems. Probably someone from community can help. 

Ingo's comment:

But the last point for QA is open ;-), add phpcs support: https://netbeans.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=172543

We talked with Radek last week about it. Also there is simple integration of Code Snifffer from one guy from community. Thanks to Benjamin for the module.  

Comment from e.s.t.:

If I could have more, I would choose configurable Line Breaks, and some better formatting (i.e. format of multidimensional arrays is horrible).

The PHP formatting is a pain.  There was done some fixes in NetBeans 6.8, but IMHO it's not enough. My plan is to rewrite formatting and the rules should reflect selected style. The first styles will be taken from PHP Code Sniffer.

Also the problem with PHP is that the is not one and only true framework, like it is with Ruby (Rails) or Python (Django). So again avoid it, and instead give the work for the community around those projects. You foucs on core IDE support, community focuses on plugins. "You wanna have support for CakePHP? Write a plugin for it, we will show you how :)". Have a Firefox for an example, it's extensions is key to success, and because of that we have great plugins like Firebug and tons of others, and they were created by community folks, not Mozilla.

Basically I agree with and I wrote this above. 

Tom's comment:

I also would like to be able to bind the code templates to file extensions instead of mime-types. I got specific templates for XML files that should only be used with specific DTDs. I have no problem with naming the files according to the underlying DTDs like "file.vdrive.xml" or "file.db.xml".

I think it's done in the right way that the editor features are bind to the mimetypes. For the xml, you can define your own mimetype like text/xml+myextension and in the file resolver you can specify the dtd or schema, which has to contain such xml file. Then the editor is using features defined for the text/xml  mimetype and add features for your mimetype.

Also I would like to be able to force NetBeans to use a code-highlighter of my choice. For example: the default extension for XLIFF-files is .xlf. Thus NetBeans does not recognize the files as XML and doesn't highlight them at all. Instead I always have to use an external XML editor.(I know I can associate an extension with a Mime-Type in Tools > Options > Misc > Files > File associations. But this is not a convenient and user friendly solution. Would any user really guess from this name that this functionality is actually for setting the default highlighter?)

Probably I work with NetBeans too long and it looks to me intuitive. If you know which advantages has the mimetype approach, it's nice idea. 

Denyerec's comment:

This might sound really trivial, but it'd be really nice if @deprecated functions (indicated by a doc block comment) would show up with a different / grey / faint icon in the code navigator...

I can not say now, whether it's trivial or not, but you are right, it's missing feature in PHP. I think that Java has it. 

hantsy's comment:

I can not find the wiki page about NetBeans 6.9....

There is no a central page about NetBeans 6.9 yet. Every team is trying to create  a plan for the release. So you can find a pages from different team on wiki.netbeans.org,  but they are drafts. I wouldn't expected something final yet.