Alternative syntax for control structures is popular in pure PHP template systems including Zend framework, CI, Symfony, Kohana, SolarPHP, Yii, Lithium and many others. WordPress, Drupal and most of PHP CMSs use that kind of syntax in their template/layout/theme files too.

It is great if Netbeans IDE can highlight that kind of syntax especially when parsing template files (.tpl.php):

<?php if (): ?>

<?php elseif: ?>


<?php else: ?>

<?php endif; ?>

or


<?php foreach(): ?>

<?php endforeach; ?>


or

<?php while (): ?>

<?php endwhile; ?>

While the syntax is used to separate HTML code into distinct blocks, its highlight will greatly improve readability of PHP template code mixed into HTML file

Many thanks

Still missing implementation for this. Unfortunately I haven't time to do it yet.

Note that it doesn't have to be part of HTML files; we use it quite a bit just to increase readability of pure PHP files as compared to using curly braces:

<?php

if (1 == $foo):
	echo 'it's  a 1!';
else:
	echo 'it's something else..';
endif;

?>

The highlighting of standard syntax was implemented two weeks ago. See my blog: http://blogs.oracle.com/netbeansphp/entry/highlighting_of_alternative_syntax