The Swiss Army Knife of text editors

Text editors don’t get much consideration. Some use them infrequently, when viewing ReadMe files or other such short documents. Others use them more often, but may use Windows Notepad because it comes pre-installed.

Windows Notepad is a basic text editor that has been part of every version of Windows since 1985. If you rarely use a text editor, and then only for quick, minimal editing or viewing, Notepad may be fine. For anyone who works with text files often, such as .html or .php files for web site creation, log viewing, config file checking, or just quick note taking, Notepad proves inadequate. Plus, the font used by Notepad is ugly and awkward to read. For an alternative, I recommened NoteTab.

Unlike Windows Hotepad’s single open document limitation, NoteTab allows multiple documents to be open concurrently with a tabbed interface. Its viewing options and user interface are highly configurable, including toggle word wrapping, text statistics such as word count, multilingual spell check (in Standard and Pro versions) and a favourites menu.

Clipbooks are code-entering or text-string entering shortcuts grouped by use. They are user creatable and editable. The installation comes with several clipbooks, and others are freely available from the developer and other users.

For those of us who create or maintain web sites, the included HTML and CSS clipbooks are terrific. The HTML clipbook allows single-click application of commonly-used tags and many less common tags. The clipbook is editable: I edited some HTML clips to match my own coding standards, and added clips for special element structures I used on my sites.

Other NoteTab features include:

• customizable toolbar
• ability to install on a USB flash drive for portability
• font selection for display
• support of UTF-8 and Unicode
• HTML tag stripping of text blocks
• convert text case
• search and replace
• extend functionality with scripting
• customizable menu shortcuts (in Standard and Pro versions).

In fact, there are far too many features for me to do them justice in a brief review. The Pro version is programmable, and includes syntax highlighting, multiple undo/redo, line numbering, toggled display of non-printing characters, and more.

NoteTab includes a command to change Windows file associations to automatically launch NoteTab when opening .txt and other text files such as .htm, .php, .log. Windows 7 blocks this command, so for Windows 7 just use the standard Windows method to change file associations.

Three versions are available: Light; Standard; and Pro. For many of you seeking a better alternative to Windows Notepad, the free NoteTab Light may suffice. I bought the Pro version, and am glad I did.

An active community provides discussion, tips, free scripts, clipbooks and other enhancements. I’ve found the developer’s tech support to be responsive, and the community to be friendly and very helpful. One community member worked with me to create an FTP clipbook that uploads changed files direct from within NoteTab to my web site without having to separately launch my FTP software.

Take my advice: ditch Windows Notepad in favour of the superior NoteTab.