Most tutorials on creating HTML/XHTML/CSS will refer to opening up your MS NotePad or any other generic text editor. While this may work while your learning, soon enough you will realize there will be more than enough NotePad windows open on your task bar that you can’t really get any work done! While there are a lot of programs like DreamWeaver and MS FrontPage that allow you to edit your HTML in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface, every webmaster still needs that basic text editor in their toolbox.

I never transferred to a WYSIWYG interface, but I did find a free program called EditPad Lite. First off, it was free. Secondly, it offered tabbed an interface. It was not hard for me to fall in love with this program, especially because I had zero money and having all my .html pages (and any other files requiring a text editor) open into one window instead of scattered across my task bar helped me stay organized. This program also featured the best find and replace feature I have ever come across in any program, still to this day. Let me not forget how stealth this program is, it has never overloaded and it sits nicely in my task bar ready to open when I need it.

Eventually they released EditPad Pro, which had many nice upgrades including syntax highlighting (you can even create your own), spelling checker, and a nice upgrade to their already perfect find and replace feature. A neat little feature in both Lite and Pro versions is their case converter. You can convert selected text to title case, all lower case, all upper case, and even invert case, it is pretty handy feature! Both versions also have block editing, allowing you to tab a selected block of text or do other text changes to selected text.

EditPad Pro and Lite are great alternatives to MS NotePad or any other generic text editors. Both have many advanced features over generic text editors and will help you work more efficiently.

Website: EditPad

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