Well I don't particularly like DreamWeaver, it offer lousy coding and is just plain painful to try and work with, so I prefer  PHP designer . It makes the coding all around easier to work with and it is free!  

Like so often: It depends!

When writing a program in pure PHP I cannot believe Dreamweaver will assist you that much (as it is basically a design tool).

Wheras if you want to preview HTML-output combined with some PHP elements, Dreamweaver might be the better choice...

For lotgd I prefer a simple text editing tool (TextPad - simply because it was already installed, before I started programming regularly... )

But I think, any PHP Editor is better...

I enjoy using Notepad++, as it allows me to define my own colors and texts for syntax highlighting. So, I will know if a string is borked, if it is not in Comic Sans MS.

As well, the collapsing between {} cuts down on parse errors.

Once you get it, go to Languages on the top, and then down to Styler Configurator. Then, you can define things for the different languages that it supports.

I have Dreamweaver, but can't remember the last time I actually used it and I never use it for PHP. The PHP Designer 2005 is pretty good although I try to use Notepad ++ mainly.

I have a Mac now and I love BBEdit, though it's not free.  I still LOVE it though. Great text editor, and Dreamweaver's design mode is virtually useless when coding in PHP .

its not solid to say a program sucks or is lousy and not back the statement up... yes dreamweaver is a design tool, and offers wysiwyg user interface but thats not to say you cant code with it for it offers the same featurees as the popular coding environements such as phpdesigner2005.  i know, i use both sometimes independently and sometimes collaboratively...

dreaweaver takes a bit to load, but so does phpdesigner if you're comparing it to scintella or something like that...

they both offer code hints, keyboard macros etc.. if you're a coder as compared to a designer then its better to go with phpdesigner imo, but if you do design and coding then use both.  no one says you need to stick to one program and one program only... the only way that can be achieved is for those that code with notepad type apps.  the point of environments is to make workflow more efficient by providing features that help the programmer.

but just cause a person uses an environment does not mean that a person is simply pressing a button to write code.  those features are simply snippits...  

i have had dreamweaver crash when working on graphic/layer intensive sites but never because of code.  if its crashing its usually something in an external css file or something.

j.