I love PHPStorm as my IDE of choice — this replaced my Zend CE IDE last year following the PHP-Conference in Santa Clara which I was fortunate enough to be able to attend.  Yesterday, I discovered add-ons, or in the PHPStorm nomenclature, Plug-ins.  Plug-ins are programs which integrate into the IDE with the intent and purpose of making your life a lot easier.

Initially, what caught my eye was a plug-in called “CSS-X-Fire” which integrates the Firebug CSS editor into the IDE with CSS capabilities.  Since I’ve been debugging my fair share of CSS lately, I thought this would be a pretty cool tool to have at my disposal.  Let’s see what else they have…

*gasp*  SO MUCH COOL STUFF! *gasp*

I installed the BASH shell next just for fun which not only gives me a shell within my IDE, but also provides BASH syntax highlighting.  And, yes, my work-site I support has a lot of BASH utility scripts, so cool.

Next, I see a gem called Database Navigator written by Mr. Dan Cioca.  This plug-in gives you access to your MySQL environment, through the IDE.