When I first started developing, having to edit and then manually upload files to my server was a real pain - not to mention the effort involved when you make a mistake and have to try and undo what you just did! Fairly quickly I stumbled across a piece of software which I have sworn by ever since - SmartFTP. What SmartFTP allows you to do is to edit a file from your remote host, which it saves in a temporary directory. It then monitors this file, and whenever there is a change (i.e. you save the file) it automatically triggers an upload to the server. This has massively reduced my developing time, as I don't have to worry about uploading the files. The other nice thing is because you've not closed the file, you can ctrl+z and undo what changes you just made, hit save again, and all is back to how it was before you started tinkering!
I have to say, this has probably been one of the most useful discoveries I've made in a long time! It does cost to purchase, but it's only 36.95 USD for a personal license and is WELL worth the money. The URL is http://www.smartftp.com
