one thing that i like about visual studio is it allow you to debug the website/web app live on your local machine and you can see it visually how the webpage will look like and it throw you error when you click on the part that didn't work. it's useful when you're working in the area without any internet connection, you don't need to upload and you can see how it work on your local pc.

i tried Zend studio version 4 before and Zend only show you a page one at the time with html output. you can't visually see how the page will look like, did they change this Can i see the whole website visually and not the html output.

No, when I worked with PHP, I was never able to find a decent IDE for it; certainly nothing comparable to Visual Studio. Visual Studio is the best of the best, and I think you'll be hard pressed to find something similar for PHP. :D