What’s new in PHPStorm 9

PHPStorm 9 has just been released a few days ago, and as a PHP developer you should definitly give it a try. This new release does not come with a dramatic game-changer feature, but with lots of deep under-the-core improvements. Let’s have a look:

New features regarding PHP

• parameter refactoring / postfix refactoring (looks like PHPStorm now understands RegEx and is able to detect array keys when typing)
• PHP7 for sure
• much simpler debugging setup right from the Settings menu
• improved integration for working with remote servers / VMs in general
• “inline debugging”: see the current state of your application right in the code

New features regarding frontend & JavaScript

• much better JavaScript support, better recognition of dependencies / includes
• auto-closing of tags, dual-auto-completing in opening/closing-tags at the same time, short-cuts for writing HTML much faster
• tracing languages transpiled to JavaScript (to be honest, I don’t know what this means)
• V8 profiling for Node.js apps

General features

• distraction-free mode (also known as Zen mode in other editors)
• lots of other improvements

Support for the Hack language (a strongly typed dialect (?) of PHP) has been postponed, if you want to know more have a look into this article in the JetBrains dev blog: Hack Language Support in PhpStorm Postponed. Also, find the official “What’s new” page on JetBrains site: What’s new in PHPStorm 9.

Disclaimer: This article is not sponsored by JetBrains or anybody else and there’s no affiliate link. I just like the IDE very much.