In most (if not all) editors/IDE's I used in the past the cursor would move only to places I had typed chars myself or but blank spaces.

Example (the X and | are cursor positions. I used whitespace in the textfield here, but just image that there is no whitespace ):
line1: oooooooooooooooooooooo|
line2: oooooooooooooooX |
line3: oooooooooX |

If the cursor is at the end of line 1 and I hit the down-arrow I would like to cursor to move to the place where I put the X. PhpED moves the cursor to the |. Is there a setting somewhere in the editor which I can change to let the cursor work like that?

Yes, there is a setting in Tools->Settings->Editor settings->Cursor beyound EOL and probably you'll want to have Cursort wraps at start of line checked.

Isn't it quite intuitive?

Oh, thats great! I did check for such an option but wasnt exactly looking for EOL stuff Many thanks!