terrys wrote:I went back into he file properties and note it was set to open with Dreamweaver, changed it to open with PHP ide and it's now working okay.
No. This setting is just relevant for Windows, not for the Apache webserver.
php files have to be requested by url from a webserver because they need to processed before delivered to the browser.
Thats why you cannot doubleclick or drag and drop a php file inro your browser.
terrys wrote:I am using "PHP Coder ide" to learn and write code, is this my best option ?
Ask 100 PHP developers which the best IDE is and you will get 101 different answers.
Try out different IDEs and use the one you are most effective with.
I for example use
phpstorm (IDE) and
Sublime Text 3 (Texteditor) for personal use and
Zend Studio at work. All of them are commercial licenses.
But there are some good free IDEs too like
Eclipse PDT or
NetBeans and the free editor
Notepad++P.S.: I really don't like DreamWeaver