This new post from Troels Knak-Nielsen on the SitePoint PHP blog shares a few helpful in-browser development tools that could come in handy in your day to day coding.

While debuggers exists, there isn't much of a tradition for using them in PHP. People have largely come to rely on injecting debugging code directly into the program, for inspecting program scope.

Tools mentioned include traceers and error handlers (like XDebug), some debugging parts of the popular PHP frameworks and the set of *cachegrind tools to help you parse the output of XDebug for profiling your application.

Recently, the Springloops version control system made its debut on the web and was greeted with both skepticism and interest. One developer, Hasin Hayder decided to look at it from a different angle and worked to see how easy it would be to reproduce a similar service.

Springloops is a nice code management service recently came into focus. It helps you to manage the code base of your application, monitor the commit and deploy the final version easily to another server. So if you are wondering how to build such a system and how it actually works, this article is for you.

He breaks it down into the six main topics (as he sees it) that are the core parts of the system - things like payment gateways, setting up subversion and making it user friendly. He goes through each topic, explaining its place in the application and providing some links to resources to help you set it up (or at least learn more about it).

DevShed has posted the second part of their series looking at installing and using web-based file managers written in PHP. This time they look at PHPfileNavigator2.

We are going to continue with the installation and configuration of web-based file managers. We'll present another freeware, open-source PHP-based file manipulation utility in the same way we explained bfExplorer in the previous part. This time, it's going to be the PHPfileNavigator2 (pfn2).

They cover the basics - installation (on a pre-existing Apache/PHP server), configuuration and some example screenshots of it in action when correctly set up.

DevShed has posted the first part of a series looking at the installation, configuration and usage of two web-based file managers - BytesFall Explorer and PHPfileNavigator. This first part of the series focuses on BytesFall.

Everybody knows how to use a conventional desktop application that acts as a file manager. And we all know how useful these manipulation utilities really are. They give us a hierarchical view of the content of our folders. They also have dozens of extra functions. [...] We will present two freeware PHP-based file managers. You'll find out how to install and configure them.

Part one handles the first steps with BytesFall - the installation and configuration (you'll already need a web server with PHP installed for this one).

On her blog, Tiffany Brown has a review of an online editing resource she came across that can help you write code and work with remote files via a web interface - WorkSpace (including HTML, JavaScript, CSS, PHP, SQL, Java, and Perl documents).

WorkSpace - which currently is currently in limited beta testing - is an online text editing environment with an eye towards web development. You can create documents and save them in your hosted sandbox, or directly to your server via FTP.

She talks about her experiences with it - both the good and the bad. She liked the simplicity of it all but thought it lacked a few of the features it needed. She also mentions the lack of version control in the application.

I do like the idea behind WorkSpace. [...] The downside is that you're trusting a company with all of your web site data. I'm not sure the slight gain in the ability to work remotely is worth the trade-off of giving WorkSpace server access.

In a new tutorial on O'Reilly's ONLamp.com website today, Bill Lubanovic shows an example of moving a normal web-based PHP application over to a more Ajax-enabled environment.

In the web environment, we've typically needed hacks like populating hidden fields in a form, and regenerating the whole page, even for a tiny change. Can we make the process more rational?

This article describes a makeover of a typical database-backed web form. We'll show some old code '" a mixture of HTML, JavaScript, and PHP '" and rebuild it with modern web techniques like Ajax, and modern tools like jQuery.

In their example, they show how to take a simple form element, a select box of names, and modify it to work with an Ajax connection. Instead of having to submit the information back to to the PHP script with a form submit button, they can make a request when the user changes the select option to get that person's information. They've included all of the relevant code and some great explanation to help you recreate the example and move on to work up your own.