> Working locally, I can hit one key combo and be previewing my changes in the browser.
Something I can do as well. Local vs. remote plays no role here.
> Not to mention being independent of a net connection to develop.
This is true, but seems like an edge case to me. Wifi is available pretty much everywhere you spend significant amounts of time, and a mobile hotspot is a must if you're a mobile developer anyway.
Besides, I'm always looking stuff up while coding, so I need the connection anyway.
Truth about needing the net connection anyway; I was reaching on that one. I guess I could add a remote staging server to my setup, which is a non-issue, and I'd still push to the git master repo from my local repo.
So you have it set so one key combo from your editor saves the file you're working on, copies it to the appropriate ___location on the staging server automatically, and refreshes the page in the browser? That doesn't sound so bad actually; maybe I need to rethink my VM plan for Windows web dev, which turns out to be very timely for me.
[Oh, I see, you don't even keep a local copy; you edit the remote copy directly. I wonder if the Github client for Windows can watch a remote dir.]
Even if I were using a Linux or Mac development machine, I would still have/want to develop everything remotely by mounting a network share, but that's just my situation/preference. Either way, I don't see it as a big deal. In fact, I think it's better to test the code on a remote staging server that matches your live environment than it is to use a local Linux/Mac setup that might differ from the live environment.
And yes, the remote files are directly edited. There's a volume (i.e., Z:\) on my laptop that is the remote directory I've mounted. I use Samba, but you can also use NFS by installing the necessary client software from Add/Remove Programs, if that's what you prefer.
I don't know anything about the GitHub client, so I can't help you there.
If I was on a Mac, I'd install OSXFUSE[1] and mount the server share through SSH. I must admit I'm a bit wary of poking an SMB hole in my server; maybe my fear is unfounded.
Something I can do as well. Local vs. remote plays no role here.
> Not to mention being independent of a net connection to develop.
This is true, but seems like an edge case to me. Wifi is available pretty much everywhere you spend significant amounts of time, and a mobile hotspot is a must if you're a mobile developer anyway.
Besides, I'm always looking stuff up while coding, so I need the connection anyway.