Hi Karl, > > I did some search and found Zend Studio for MAC 5.5. > it's $299, but thats a goal at least. Just so you know I fully empathise with both yours and Daevid's situation - you'll probably find a lot of people on this list are in the same boat, as am I. Anyway just a hint - I bought my first Mac in September and I'm never turning back but that's a conversation for another day. The one thing I thought was missing that I couldn't match on Windows was a decent IDE - for both PHP and C++ (my two main freelancer languages.) However someone on this list pointed me in the direction of what I thought was a Java IDE - NetBeans. It turns out it's a damned-fine C++ and PHP editor. It handles code completion of LARGE projects (4,000+ files) ten times faster than others - Zend Studio and Eclipse, and Komodo for instance. Plus it's free :) http://netbeans.org/features/php/index.html I used Zend Studio when it was a stand-alone Java application then switched to PhpEd but unfortunately that's Windows only. I've also tried Eclipse but couldn't get to grips with it. However I feel NetBeans is such a stronger contender than any of these - straight from the word go I just got on with it. Re: the certification - I'm looking at doing a Zend course next year for nothing more than to try and get PHP recognised as a professional skill - I've been programming in it since 2002. I don't know of any other companies that do PHP qualifications, but as Zend is "the PHP company" anyway they probably mean more :P Hope this helps you anyway. Regards, Andy -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
