On the Zend Developer Zone there's a new post giving you five tips you can use to help speed up Eclipse PDT and Zend Studio if you happen to use one of those IDEs.

Eclipse Helios (3.6) includes an improved version of Eclipse PDT, labeled 2.2. It is also included in the current Zend Studio (7.1 and above). Among other enhancements, it dramatically improved the performance of code lookup-related tasks like searching references, creating a type hierarchy and even code completion.

Some of the recommendations have more to do with the system the IDE is running on, but they're helpful none the less:

• Disable virus scanners
• Use a fast storage device
• Keep your JVM up to date
• Delete the database if your experience problems
• Do not backup the database

Goran has pointed out a plugin for Eclipse that can help those out there wanting to adopt Test-Driven Development into their process - MakeGood (screenshot here).

MakeGood provides a test runner to run unit tests on Eclipse PDT. MakeGood strongly supports Test Driven Development (TDD) by various features.

Features in the plugin include:

• Runs all tests when a file is saved.
• Debugs a test.
• Reruns the last test.
• Can use the system include path when running tests.

It supports both PHPUnit and SimpleTest so you're covered either way. It also supports the Zend Debugger and Xdebug for help with your debugging needs.

Mihai Corlan has posted a new tutorial to his blog today looking at how to debug a Zend Framework and Flex application with the help of Eclipse PDT and XDebug.

As your projects grow in size and more people get involved you’ll find yourself fixing more and more bugs. When this happens, one of the best friends a developer has is the debugger. In this paper, I’ll talk about some of the workflows and tools you can use to debug Flex and PHP projects.

He shows you an example of the debugging with a sample script you can link to your Zend Framework installation (including a database backend). From there he includes the instructions on how to use Flash Builder 4 and the Eclipse PDT + XDebug combo to use the Flex debugger or PHP debugger (in Eclipse) to find the problems in the code.

The Zend Developer Zone has (re)posted a tutorial from Kevin Schroeder about combining Flex and the Zend Framework to create a simple application. This is the first part in a series of articles on the subject.

Given that Zend has had a professional relationship with Adobe for a while, I have been looking for the time to actually dive into what Flash was offering so I could make some kind of judgment call on it. [...] With that in mind, I would like to talk about some introductory topics on what it would take to get a basic Flash/Flex application up and running. This will be part 1 of an X part series. I don't know how many parts there will be, but I would expect that there would be a few.

He walks you through the full process of using Flash Builder 4 (a 60 day free trial is available) and Zend Studio/Eclipse PDT to set up a native environment for rapid development of Flex apps. He creates the basic "Hello World" app, showing how to connect PHP to the Flex application and a bit of additional work to get it to cooperate with a MVCed Zend Framework application too.