On Developer.com today there's a new article talking about some of the PHP-related improvements in the latest version of the PHP Development Tools (PDT) extension for Eclipse including template assistance and improved debugging.

Among the 39 projects included in Eclipse Helios is the PDT (PHP Developer Tools) 2.2 release. The PHP Eclipse project was first announced back in 2005, with version 1.0 coming in 2007. With the PDT 2.2 release, the project has continued to evolve with new features as the project's popularity has grown.

New features include a template content assist feature that will help make it easier for developers to get an application up and running quickly and better debugging support via a new inspection tool to help evaluate PHP expressions. The post also includes some quotes from Andi Gutmans of Zend on the progress PDT has made and some thoughts on one of its competitors, Netbeans.