Notepad++ - A Review

Notepad++ - A Review

All of us have used the ubiquitous Notepad, the default text editor shipped with Windows. It offers very basic set of features that may not always be sufficient. I know most of you use MS Word and WordPad very often, however that is overkill if you just need a plain text file. Whether you are a programmer, a web developer or a home use who type a lot of text, you should switch to a better tool.

There is a great freeware Notepad Replacement called Notepad++. This is a great piece of software that I have used for a long time. It is one of the first programs that I install on a fresh OS install. I will try and explain why I like Notepad++ and why you should give it a try (I know you will like it).

Features: Notepad++ has more features than you may ever use. I will only talk about the ones that I like and which are widely used.

Multi-Document:

If you use Firefox, you must have used Tabs. Notepad++ also supports Tabs. This means that you can open more than one file in the same window. Desk Space is precious and this really helps.

Multi-View:

You may have five files open, however you want to compare two of them. No problem. Switch to the split view and have them open at the same time, side-by-side. Cool, ehh.

Zoom in and Zoom out:

Don’t strain your eyes, just Zoom In. Many a times we need to see the text at a larger size but we don’t want to change the font size. You can simply zoom/out using Notepad++. (Ctrl + Mouse Scroll OR Ctrl ‘+’/’-‘)

Full Drag 'N' Drop supported:

This is a must for people like me who keep moving text time and again. You don’t need to press any key, just drag.

Regular Expression Search/Replace supported:

I missed this feature in MS Notepad. Thanks to Notepad++ you can search with regular expressions in Notepad++, it’s a big time saver.

File Status Auto-detection:

It is another gem. When you are working on a file and some other program modifies it, you are notified about the change and you can open the updated file. If the file is deleted you are given an option to remove it from Notepad++.

Macro recording and playback:

If you do a task repeatedly than you can record that as a macro and run it every time you need to do it again.

For Programmers:

If you are a programmer than you will love following features:

1. Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
   
2. User Defined Syntax Highlighting
   
3. Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
   
4. Auto-completion
   

Notepad++ supports many languages like C, C++, C#, Java, ASP, PHP, HTML. The list is long.

Screenshots:
You may have a look at the interface by visiting the following link:

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

What Now??

What are thinking about, go give it a try.

You may get Notepad++ from SourceForge.

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm