Dreamweaver FTP Local Permission Error

The "local permission problem" encountered while using Dreamweaver for FTP is addressed in part by various posts, and I'm compiling those bits into this one post and asking if anyone else has had success in configuring Dreamweaver to avoid this error.

I'm using Dreamweaver CS4 on Windows 7. I'm new to both Drupal and Dreamweaver. I encountered the problem while attempting an upgrade from Drupal 6.16 to 6.17, first trying Dreamweaver for FTP. In Dreamweaver, all of the new files transferred successfully except for an includes file which displayed the following message:

index.htm\includes\. - error occurred - Access denied. The file may not exist locally, may be open in another program, or there could be a local permission problem.

All the includes files existed locally, and none were open. I never discovered what a "local permission problem" is or how to solve it. Though the particular includes file that was denied is not shown in the error message, I discovered that the missing file is one that affects logged-in status. Though I had logged in as admin prior to the upgrade, update.php was rendering an "access denied" message.

By searching, I found several sources that claim Dreamweaver occasionally corrupts files during FTP transfer and that I should use an alternate client such as FileZilla. FileZilla transferred all of the Drupal 6.17 files successfully, allowing me to run update.php while logged in as admin. (By that point I had to manually find the log in page and log in again by typing http://localhost.com/index.php/user). However, when I re-opened some of the new core Drupal 6.17 files in Dreamweaver, the formatting that separates code into lines with different colors had been lost. I repeated the FTP transfer in FileZilla, making sure the type of transfer was set to "auto," checked again in Dreamweaver and found the code formatting with line separation and color differences had returned. Does anyone know if some setting in Dreamweaver might have switched off, causing the code to display without formatting, or would the problem have been with a setting in my first FileZilla FTP transfer? I do have Chris Charlton's Dreamweaver API extension for Drupal, which may be enhancing some of the on-screen formatting for Drupal files, but it was installed long before I started the upgrade.

In the future, I would like to use Dreamweaver for all of my work, including FTP, as it is extra effort to switch between programs. I know Dreamweaver CS5 has some added support for Drupal, but I don't know if the upgrade to CS5 would solve the FTP problem. One of the experts at my local group, the Oklahoma Drupalers, said he has employees who use Dreamweaver for Drupal all the time, while others encouraged me to use an alternate client such as Komodo or Firefox with Firebug for all of my Drupal work. I'm not a hard-core programmer; I'm just running a site connected to my business, and I like the user interface of Dreamweaver. However, I'm willing to learn how to work with Drupal using a system other than Dreamweaver if the difference would be worthwhile. Any comments on any of the issues mentioned in this post would be helpful. Thank you.