I have been searching for the best open source PHP IDE for a while now. At first I used phpeclipse and later I tried eclipses PHP plugin but it was buggy and it seems they are not keen on really getting it working. I recently tried Netbeans PHP support and that seems the best so far.
What do others use? Yes I know real men use vi or emacs :(
An interesting followup question for you would be: What are you looking for from a PHP IDE? This can vary from coder to coder, of course.
Unfortunately for myself, I have yet to find an IDE that handles PHP very well either. My basic criteria for an IDE is that it allows me to right-click a function name and then jump to that function's definition. So far as I know, no decent editor supports this yet (as I'm sure you've found with Eclipse).
I use and like kdevelop. It has parameter help for functions, highlighting and I like the project search and replace capabilities. Oh, and supports svn which is also nice.
The (non-pro) version of Aptana Studio (itself built on Eclipse), with the PHP plugin installed, seems to work very well for me. Among other things, it has fairly robust code hinting, jump-to-definition that doesn't break all the time, and edit-time syntax checking. I haven't tried the pro version, and I try to avoid all of their hosted-and-buzzword services.
There seems to be some confusion about what an IDE is. There are text editors and IDEs. Text editors (Komodo Edit, TextMate, etc.) edit text and maybe few other things (folding, syntax highlighting, snippets, etc.) while IDEs do all of that and offer things like advanced debugging, autocomplete (maybe something like intellisense) and probably more robust remote/local project management and better version control integration.
A good IDE offers more power than a text editor and while you can configure the likes of vim and emacs (or TextMate) to handle IDE-like tasks I think you will find it much easier to just start using a real IDE from the get go (though if you have have the opportunity to learn something like VIM in your spare time or in a class I highly recommend it as once you get used to it you will find it immensely powerful) I use VIM for much of my text editing but when I start a big project I load up NetBeans and use it with Xdebug and Subversion for a very powerful and complete development environment.
I would have to come in and fight for "advanced text editors". There are two real classes, the simpler style, or the heavy duty style.
Simpler style text editors like jedit or komodo edit(cross-platform), textmate(mac), scribes or geany(linux), notepad++(windows), or any of the like. Often these have basic features like snippets and autocompletion that will aid your coding in a very similar method to an IDE.
My real suggestions, the heavy duty style text editors, are things like vim and emacs. I get the feeling from what you said in your question that you don't really feel like going to the effort of learning one. I personally use Vim primarily, so I can't offer any information on emacs. However, spending about an hour learing vim with vimtutor can get you working faster than you would on a standard text editor. From there, just through use you will learn the other things that make it faster. If you don't feel like doing this, but would like to dip your toes into vim, try out cream. It's a nice graphical frontend to vim with all the power. However, it has bindings for normal actions, like Ctrl-S for save rather than the vim style :w. It lets you learn some of vim without diving into the deep end. I would suggest though, at some point, if you like cream diving in and learning the underlying vim. I have sped up so much of my coding since I started using vim.
I used true IDEs for a while, but I can't say I am a big fan of them. If you're working on linux I know geany gives a lot of the "Big IDE" feel without the "Big IDE" weight. It also works with just about every language you can throw at it. If there are specific needs you have, we can address the question somewhat better. I feel as though going out of the IDE gets you to know what is going on in the background a little more. I could be wrong and it could just be that I switched out of IDEs at the same time as I started to get the underlying technology by coincidence. YMMV.
I very much agree with Seburdis here. The choice whether to use an editor or a full-blown IDE, and the choosing which editor/IDE completely depends on what exactly do you need your development environment to provide.
Some can't live without auto-completion/code suggestion. Others need snippets for speed. Many just prefer big text areas with syntax highlighting. I've personally known C++ developers use only notepad to write their next killer app. And so on.
Maybe if you could make a list of what ypu really want to have in your next Editor/IDE, you might be able to get even greater help.
Eclipse IDE is pretty good. I have been using it for a while now and while it does code completion, right-click open source, refactoring (somewhat) etc... it does not handle large files very well. It will crash easily if you create large pieces of code and +/- functions, and large css files that are minimized to one liners are handled poorly as well.
To me it's still a good solution. Eclipse has nice support for SVN as well and other potentially useful plugins. It's just not always the fun to figure out how to get things setup.
Real Men use Vi or Emacs . I have Tips for Eclipse too on my Blog
http://technyooz.com/?q=content/vi-vim-full-blown-php-python-ruby-rails-perl-c-c-ide
http://technyooz.com/?q=content/emacs-editor-crash-course-and-tutorial
But , Personally I think NetBeans is the Best for me as a PHP IDE as I do lot of Symfony and Zend Framework work. NetBeans is made just like We Normal People think :)
With Eclipse I think you need a Comp. Science Degree to get a hold of it ( Though I have 2 of them :)
Cheers!