I'm getting ready to take on a project that's larger than anything I've worked on. Thus far I've been opening up files in xemacs (windows GUI) and using FTP to upload them - once uploaded I test them online. I would like to be able to test offline. Also, for quick changes it's tedious to download a file (html for example), make changes in xemacs, save the file, then drag it back to the ftp program to upload. I remember in college that we would edit right in the online directory - is this possible on a windows host? I just downloaded Roadsend - is this useful? Please let me know any other pieces of software that I might find useful to make this effort more effective and efficient. Several years ago I programmed quite a bit of Java on a Linux box using xemacs and was able to get around pretty well - but that was a result of the great sys admin. Thanks!
Set up your own web server and PHP on your computer, test there, after all done, transfer all to the "real" server, test there.