I am working on some PHP code. I discovered what appears to be a nice IDE for PHP, PhpEd. I downloaded their evaluation version, which seems to work relatively well in many respects — although I have had some issues with ftp file synchronization. Anyway, I noticed on their web site that they offer discounts for folks who work at universities. As I am a full time staff member at a university, I followed their instructions and sent TWO emails (in the span of about 10 days) to their sales department inquiring about the education discount. They haven’t bothered to respond to either email. This is just sad. They had what was almost undoubtedly a sure sale, which would probably have lead to several other sales due to word of mouth, but, they don’t seem to care enough to respond to email inquiries. Amazing. I cannot say I am all that surprised… so many companies just don’t respond to sales, support, whatever via email. If a company is going to publish an email address, they should have somebody who monitors incoming email daily.
I have since discovered PHP Eclipse. This will probably meet my needs, as I use Eclipse for Java work, anyway. That said, I am deeply saddened that Eclipse doesn’t appear to have “Team” functionality oriented around FTP (just CVS and SVN via a plugin). There is a plugin for “FTP and Webdav” support, but, it is just sad — it doesn’t do anything near what is needed. I did discover that using NetDrive I can just work directly will files on the FTP server, so, good enough for now.