How can I work off an FTP site for a project? In Zend this is extremely easy and I would love to know how to do it with phpEd.

In PhpED it's much easier and more flexible.
Just create an account in Tools->Accounts, then select it in the project properties.
Then you'll be able to upload and download files and folders in the Workspace window.
Also you can drag-drop files to/from Explorer window where all the accounts are visible too.

I'm slightly confused. I didn't see a way to select the FTP site in the project properties for the project root. Only local folders and network drives.

With Zend I can "edit directly" just as if the files were locally. Unless I misunderstand, with your solution you have to actually sort of download-edit-upload manually as you go?

In PhpED its a little bit different to Zend.

In PhpED you have a copy of your FTP files on your local hdd. So if you want to see your changes directly press SHIFT+STRG+S - now you save and upload your file in one step.

CTRL+SHIFT+S seems to work fine about 60% of the time, and the other 40% it hangs for like a minute doing the upload. These are just small, 1-2KB files...

If ftp session is timed out, IDE has to reconnect to the server. Depending on your server it may take some minutes, especially if you're using ProFTPD. With default settings it resolves client IP and this alone is quite time expensive.
You may want to switch to WU-FTPD which is working faster or fix ProFTPD settings.

I disagree that this is "much easier."

"Much easier" means that I don't have to retain a separate copy of the code on my local windows machine.

This is one feature that I've always wished that PHPEd had. I don't WANT a copy on my local machine. It doesn't make things faster, and in fact it usually makes setting up a project on a new machine incredibly frustrating. The project I work on contains hundreds of thousands of lines of code and comments, along with associated files, easily topping 150M.

None of that should be required to be on my machine if I could simply just retrieve the file that I need, edit it, and save it back to the server directly. The only thing that needs to be maintained on the local machine is the list of files on the server.

For one thing, it means never having to worry about the files being out of sync between your desktop and the server. I edit from several locations on any given day. At home on the desktop, in the office on the laptop, linux commandline in vi... and every time I sit down, I have to completely resync the project.

It's a waste of time and energy.

Oh, and I wanted to add...

Another problem that this solves is a situation where you have case-sensitivity issues. e.g. "PEAR" directory, and "pear" file. They can't both exist on Windows...

It means you have to live with a broken project directory in PhpEd.

See that Explorer tab next to the Workspace tab? Play around with it. Problem solved...

I've said it a few times already in this forum, but I swear by WebDrive for those things.
Personally I'm a big believer in sticking to what you are specialized in/designed for. It's like a human: If you try to be good in everything, the overall quality drops. IMHO this is the same for software. The synchronization functions in PhpED are very handy for the quick upload (and sync) now and then, but nothing beats WebDrive when you actually want to (feel like) work(ing) remotely. And no I don't have any shares in WD

I've been very happy with PhpEd's FTP support. I always work and test locally, then upload to the production server.

However, WebDrive looks interesting, so thank you for the link

First of all, it's certainly faster because you download only once and _only_upload_ changed files.
For example, if you want to make one change to index.php, then check, then make another change to this file, you'd have to download it twice. With local copy, you don't have to download anything.
Another reason to have local copy is code insight. All things like Code Navigator, Code Explorer, Code Completion, depend on the code insight data provided by the parser. It needs all the sources to be scanned. Therefore to have code insight to work without local copies, IDE would have to download all the files anyway.

Secondly, you do not have to have local copy of the files at all. It's been discussed multiple times and I provided instructions on this form how to setup projects in this case.