Since you are new to PHP you should get into good practices now. NEVER use " unless you are using a variable. Use ' instead. On small files this isn't so important but on heavy servers or heavy scripts that can save you a lot of page load time.

As for IDE's. Zend is one of the best in my opinion. I use 5.5.1, the new one blows. EditPlus is nice too. IDE's are a personal preference. I used notepad for years. I hate dreamweaver as many experienced programmers do as well, but its not bad for beginners.

I would recommend an IDE that will allow debuggers and use the zend debugger. This will teach you how to fix many small issues veteran programmers miss, like php warnings. I programmed for almost 5 years before i used a debugger and i will never go back to not using one.

Cheers for the info SoN9ne.
Ill go get zend now and take a look at it.
I like dreamweaver personally as I use it for designing rather than coding. and yes I am a beginner which is probably another reason why. I also like the fact that I can see everything live as I work both in the script panel and the design panel, that way I can learn a little more html that I may not have known already. My problem is not being able to have any visual representation of the code Im typing, Im sure when I become more experienced with php this wont be an issue and maybe the nature of the script or the ide wont have a visual representation for me to reference to so I'll just have to get used to it that bit quicker.
nice one for the advice anyway and i'll keep it in mind as I continue to learn.

Hey,

On the subject of development environments. I'm sure the Zend IDE is a good suggestion, however I too use Dreamweaver but just in Source view mode. I also have an Apache server running locally with PHP support, so I can make changes in source view, hit F12 for my browser and view the changes live running on my local server. It's pretty easy to point Dreamweaver to launch from your server environment too.

There are plenty of good builds of Apache with PHP and MySql and more all ready to roll for your PC environment (I run on Windows XP Pro), but the one I use that works great and is easy-breezy to install is found here, and free: http://www.indigostar.com/indigoampp.html

Good luck to you