Text editor: PSPad

PSPad
http://www.pspad.com

"Text Editor" doesn't do this program justice - it is an editor on steriods.

Bar none, this is one of the best freeware text editors that I have used - and I do a lot of VBScript and general HTML/ASP/HTA editing at my workplace.




Some of my fundamental needs are based on (but not limited to): color code highlighting, multiple panes for editing many documents at once, string search & replace in multiple files, finding differences in two files or more, and HEX editing.

There are lots of text editors out there, and some have color syntax highlighting, multiple task panes, etc. - but none are nearly as full-featured as PSPad (especially for the price!).

Here's a quick list of features:

• work with projects
• work on several documents at the same time (MDI)
• Save desktop session to later reopen all open files
• FTP client - you can edit files directly from the web
• macro recorder to record, save and load macros
• search and replace in files
• text difference with color-coded differences highlighted
• templates (HTML tags, scripts, code templates...)
• installation contains templates for HTML, PHP, Pascal, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, MS-Dos, Perl,...
• syntax highlighting auto set by file type
• user-defined highlighters for exotic environments
• auto correction
• intelligent internal HTML preview using IE and Mozilla
• full HEX editor
• call external programs, different for each environment
• external compiler with catch command output, log window, log parser for each environment for "IDE" effect
• color syntax highlight printing and print preview
• integrated TiDy library for formatting and checking HTML code, conversion to CSS, XML, XHTML
• integrated free version of top CSS editor TopStyle Lite
• export with highlight to RTF, HTML, TeX format into file or clipboard
• column block select, bookmarks, line numbers, ...
• reformat and compress HTML code, tags char case change
• line sorting with ability to sort on defined column, with option to drop duplicates
• ASCII chart with HTML entities
• Code explorer for Pascal, INI, HTML, XML, PHP, and more in future
• spell checker
• internal web browser with APACHE support
• matching bracket highlighting

...and much, much more.

You could easily pay $39.00 or more for a full-featured product like this - and it does rival UltraEdit in terms of features (albeit, I've not used it since version 8.10).

Support forums are available, the developer regularly checks and responds to messages, and updates are frequent.