Product Review: Zend Studio 4 - Low Points of the Application

There were few things I disliked about the application. The main issue I had was the delivery of my trial username and password needed to unlock the software after installation. The email was nothing but a dense block of code, from which I had to manually extract my username and password. I’m assuming that this was caused by my email client not being able to interpret HTML email, but it is certainly one thing that Zend may need to look into at some point in the future.

The debug demo was also a bit of a let down. When launching the application, you get the standard "tip of the day" style pop-up box displaying a random tip to make using the software easier; however, at the bottom of the box is a button for launching the Debug Demo. I clicked it, expecting a smoothly animated presentation, or at least a PHP document with a lot of different bugs in it to demonstrate the various aspects of the debugger panes. I got a simple document with one bug in it. I feel that this is an area that would benefit from some enhancement.

The program has many small but outstandingly helpful features, such as the XML format install log that is generated when problems during the installation are encountered, and the code library update feature that automatically connects you to the Zend online code library to easily download any updates to the code snippets that have been added since you downloaded the application. It is partly the addition of these small but useful features that make Zend Studio 4 what it is: the only dedicated PHP development environment worth considering.