I'm a largely self-taught front-end developer only just making the transition into back-end development in order to be able to say yes to more projects.

I've found [eclipse](http://www.zend.com/en/community/pdt) to be my favourite text editor for javascript and php, but I'm conscious that it (and other IDEs) have a whole load of features which I don't know how to use, or why I should want to use them. 

I'd really appreciate some pointers on why using such-and-such a feature of an IDE helps you work more efficiently, write better code etc..., and maybe some links to useful sources of information.

Cheers

edit - I'm already converted to using ftp features and code explorer/function lists