I've been editing my WordPress theme templates and CSS manually, in Notepad++, using Firebug to inspect and tweak elements and Filezilla to upload the modified CSS files to my web server. But it seems like a very inefficient way to do it, so I've been searching for a better way.
I have Dreamweaver and tried to set it up with WordPress as the CreativePro tutorial suggested. It works fine with the basic site in the tutorial but not with a full WordPress site with custom theme, multiple posts, etc.
I did some research and the problem seems to be with custom permalinks, as Dreamweaver can't seem to handle them. The tutorial that I followed to do this is http://www.creativepro.com/article/build-wordpress-sites-dreamweaver-cs5-part-2 and the problem that I describe with custom permalinks is explained in http://tutsme-webdesign.info/wordpress-theme-editing-with-dreamweaver/ .
Then I looked for WordPress plugins that might allow me to edit the CSS and preview the results in real time. The only plugins I found were either very outdated or ranked very low with lots of problems.
So, how do you do serious editing to your WordPress themes? What editor do you use? If you work on a locally installed WordPress server before uploading to your web server, what tools do you use to streamline and simplify the download, modification and upload? How is your workflow like?