Text Editors And Web Development Text editors are most commonly used by programmers and system administrators. But a third major group of users are web developers. Even though WYSIWYG (ie "what you see is what you get") HTML editors have taken over a big slice of the web development marketplace in the last decade - and even though many of them allow direct HTML source code editing - there's still a place for a good text editor in any serious web developer's toolkit. Why? Well, speed is certainly one factor when it comes to editing web pages. In general, text editors are much faster to boot up than full-blown web editors. And sometimes (if you only have a small change to make to a web page) editing it in a text editor is simply faster and more convenient than editing it in a HTML editor. Equally, some web developers simply prefer to create and manipulate web pages in text editors. HTML is far simpler than most industrial-strength programming languages, and some developers find they're more productive in a text editor environment than a WYSIWYG one. Text editors' biggest area of use, though, is in handling web scripts, which are generally highly sensitive to high ASCII characters and have most of the other characteristics of traditional programming languages. While most text editors natively handle languages like C++, Pascal etc straight out of the box, many now handle web-based languages like PHP, Perl and ASP right out of the box too (and if they don't, quite a few can be trained to do so) This gives web developers the same robust code-cutting environment they'd have if they were developing non-web software. And it also gives them the same quality and productivity improvement tools too (eg: auto-completion; syntax-checking etc).

Other Text Editor Resources List Of Text Editors (including Mac and Unix text editors) Comparison Of Text Editors (including Mac and Unix text editors) Download.Com's Editor List (includes text editors) Softpedia's Text Editor List (includes text editors)

Text Editors

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Background: A text editor is a simplified word processor that's used to edit plain text files.

Typically, text editors don't apply any formatting to text in the same way that word processors do (ie using "hidden" or "invisible" ASCII characters outside the 0...9, a...z and basic punctuation character range). This makes them ideal for editing programming scripts or other text files that are sensitive to non-alphanumeric characters.

In the history of software, though, text editors preceded word processors. And they did so by many, many years.

The very first text editors appeared in the mid-1960s when the earliest computers began to be used in office environments. And since then most operating systems have always come with a text editor as a matter of course so that users can make changes to basic text files on the fly (for example, Windows Notepad; the Unix vi or Emacs editors; or SimpleText and TextEdit on Macs).

These days text editors tend to be used most by programmers, system administrators and other computer professionals who need to edit large files and/or manipulate programming scripts on a regular basis.

Because of this, many professional text editors have evolved into specialised programming editors that provide syntax highlighting, syntax checking, code indentation facilities and similar productivity boosting features for a range of common programming languages.

Many HTML and web editors are also highly evolved versions of text editors.

Common features in advanced text editors now include:

• The ability to open all types of files, including very large files that exceed a computer's memory
• Search and replace; cutting, copying and pasting; word-wrapping; and other common text manipulation functions
• The ability to see and manipulate high ASCII characters that are usually invisible to word processor users (eg: the characters that control line breaks or other formatting options)
• File importing

Some of the most popular (and completely free) text editors are listed below:

TextPad

Helios Software Solutions' TextPad is a personal favourite of ours. This beautifully programmed text editor runs on all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 through to Vista and it's available in English, French, Japanese, German, Dutch, Polish, Italian, Brazilian and Spanish versions. TextPad can open files of any size; provides automatic formatting for a wide range of common text formats (anything from .PHP files through to C/C++); allows you to view and manipulate "hidden" characters in documents; and - all in all - provides just about everything any amateur and/or most professionals would ever need in an industrial-strength, all round text editor. Personally, we've used Version 4.7.3 of TextPad for several years on a daily basis and have never ceased to be impressed by how bug-free the software is; how easy it is to use; how incredibly powerful it is; and how much raw intelligence has gone into programming it. We really can't praise it enough and have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone looking for a seriously good text editor (though we have heard that the new Version 5 that was released in March 2007 did have some bugs, most of which have been remedied in the 5.2.0 release - so get the 4.7.3 version if you want the most stable version). TextPad is free to download and the download is fully functional. After the initial trial period the software will turn into nagware (ie you'll get an occasional screen reminding you to purchase it). But at US$32 a licence this is quite possibly the best value you'll get from a software product this year. Get TextPad.

Crimson Editor

Crimson Editor is a small, light but very powerful replacement for Windows Notepad that offers many extremely useful features for programming languages such as HTML, C/C++, Perl and Java. These include syntax highlighting; the ability to extend support to other programming languages; multiple level undo/redo; column mode editing; an in-built spell checker; print previewing; natural word-wrapping (ie syntax highlighting and indentation are unaffected); an in-built calculator; a range of other in-built functions (eg: basic mathematic and date functions, user macros etc) and many more. Crimson Editor was originally developed by Ingyu Kang and the most current, stable release was issued in September 2004. However in December 2006 Ingyu Kang announced that in future the software would be an open source product and a successor known as Emerald Editor is now under development. Crimson Editor runs on Windows (Win95 or higher); is freeware; and is a slim 4Mb download. The software has been extensively reviewed over the years and has won plaudits from all quarters. Many programmers swear by this editor (and very few swear at it). Get Crimson Editor.

PSPad

PSPad is a powerful text editor for professional programmers. Its features include all the usual advanced text editor functions (eg: text formatting, highlighting, auto-save, spell check, search etc) but it also includes a range of productivity boosters for coding professionals including code compilers, code checkers, macros, inbuilt FTP, HTML-specific actions, auto-completion, file comparison and many, many others. Because it's so advanced and has so many features, PSPad can take a little longer to learn than other text editors, but the significant productivity boost it can give to your work once you master them makes it worthwhile to invest the time. PSPad can have some problems opening very large files (if you need to do this often we recommend using a different text editor). But if you're a programmer working on source code this should never be a problem that you'll run across. PSPad was developed by Jan Fiala; runs on Windows (from Win98 to Vista); and is freeware. The software also comes in multiple European language versions (each with a separately downloadable spell checker) and it natively supports all the most commonly-used programming languages right out of the box. PSPad has won 4 to 5 star ratings all over the Net. And if you're a hard-core code cutter it's definitely worth a close appraisal. Get PSPad.

Boxer

Boxer Software's Boxer text editor is a versatile, full-featured and multi award-winning text editor that runs on all versions of Windows (from Win95 to Vista). Boxer is very powerful but easy to use for both beginners and experienced users. Apart from all the usual advanced text editor features Boxer also offers a robust macro language, a 2 GB file size limit, syntax highlighting and printing, project support, in-built FTP and HTML support, column blocking, separately downloadable spell checkers in a range of European languages (including separate US and UK English ones, along with specialised medical and legal dictionaries); separately downloadable syntax highlighting files for programming languages not natively supported by Boxer (eg: Oracle SQL, Python, Cold Fusion, Javascript, PHP and many, many others); auto-completion; hex and unicode editing and more. Boxer is now up to Version 13 and has won more awards than we can easily poke a stick at. It's distributed as shareware and you can obtain a free, fully-functional download from Boxer Software's site. A full licence costs US$60. Get Boxer.

EditPad Pro

Finally, Just Great Software's EditPad Pro is a shareware text editor and simple word processor that runs on all versions of Windows from Win98 to Vista. The software trades off power against ease of use and (we think) reaches a happy compromise that will satisfy most average users looking for a simple but reasonably powerful everyday text editor. EditPad Pro provides a tabbed layout (which makes working with multiple documents easy); spell checking; column editing; extensive clipboard and block editing abilities, word count and other statistics. It also has text wrapping and unwrapping; alphabetic sort; bookmarks; and a character map. You can easily edit source code with syntax coloring, file navigation and code folding and the software has in-built FTP, search and replace with regular expressions, DOS/Windows/UNIX and ANSI/Unicode conversions, hexadecimal mode, integrated file comparison, auto and block indent, and line and column numbers. editPad Pro lets you store and instantly reuse standard phrases, formatting tags, and source code snippets; and you can also temporarily store and move or duplicate blocks of text. The downloadable version is fully functional except for a couple of minor missing features, and after the free trial period expires it turns into not-very-annoying nagware. A full licence costs US$50. Get EditPad Pro.