Video Tutorial development setup

[eluser]nell789[/eluser]
Hello, I just discovered CodeIgniter today and after watching the two video tutorials I am intrigued.

My question is about the way the tutorial creator was setup for the development of the site.

I've searched the forum on the subject, and found out which database application he was using, but I'd like to know which text editor was being used that allowed him to create or edit a file and for it to be available on the website right away. Was the whole thing being done locally?

In my previous PHP work, I've always had to upload newly created or edited pages to my host via FTP, which makes testing a very tedious task. How can I set things up so it's all as easy as it looked in the tutorials?