Coding Horror: Revenge of Notepad

June 12, 2004

Revenge of Notepad

I use notepad.exe dozens of times a day. Given the severely limited functionality of Notepad, it's incredible that it has taken me this long to find a suitable replacement for what is, evidently, a core part of my developer toolkit. Check out Notepad2:

The original Notepad shipped with Windows is probably the handiest program of all times, small, fast, without frills! Notepad2 tries to follow this principle, it's a small, fast and free text editor with syntax highlighting for HTML and other common languages.

Amen, brother! And don't worry, it's still relatively small at 550kb. But look at everything you get for that additional 450kb:

Customizable syntax highlighting engine (HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, ASP, PHP, CSS, Perl/CGI, C/C++, C#, Java, VB, Pascal, Assembler, SQL, Python, NSIS, INI, REG, INF, BAT, DIFF)
Drag & drop text editing inside and outside Notepad2
Basic regular expression search and replace
Useful word, line and block editing shortcuts
Rectangular selection (Alt+Mouse)
Brace matching, auto indent, long line marker, zoom functions
Support for Unicode, UTF-8, Unix and Mac text files
Open shell links
Mostly adjustable

Still not convinced? Here's a screenshot of me viewing some Perl scripts that come with the Tivo Home Media Option developer kit:

I recommend overwriting the original notepad.exe with this version, for simplicity's sake. You'll get some complaints from the XP file protection mechanism, but it works. And it kicks ass! I should have done this two years ago.

I downloaded the VC++ source and compiled the latest version with every optimization I could locate in the project properties dialog (Hey, I don't get to work with C++ much). You can download a zipped version of my compiled notepad2.exe (~250kb), or if you prefer, get it from the official website.

Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions

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Comments

jEdit is a great "multi-purpose" source code editor. I've been using it for Perl, HTML, XML, JavaScript, CSS, batch files etc for years.

It's not lightweight, it's a big Java app, but it has a great plugin architecture and some useful plugins written that make it very functional.

In general, I don't see lightweight and small memory footprint as being a requirement in something you open and use all day long. But nevertheless, Notepad has a place in the world too, and having a lightweight native editor that beats notepad as your default is a good idea...

I'll have to download notepad2 and see how it works using your trick of overwriting the original notepad (after backing it up :-)

-Rob

Rob Albin on July 26, 2006 05:46 PM

The picture is missing! 2006-11-10

dalesmoker on November 10, 2006 09:44 AM

His compiled version is missing as of today as well. I was able to download the latest version from the website and install it after much fuss and todo -- the instructions on this site ( http://weblogs.asp.net/rweigelt/archive/2004/08/12/213085.aspx ) finally did it for me.

Clint Herron on November 10, 2006 10:40 AM

You all should check out notepad++ ( http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/ ) - i've found it quite useful in many applications!

Ellery Weber on November 3, 2007 01:58 PM

As a newcomer to your blog and a soon-to-be new developer graduating this spring in CS, let me just say I appreciate learning from all of your posts and getting a better feel for what it's like to actually work as a developer. Anyway, back on subject, I second the motion that you may want to look into notepad++. It's a little larger than notepad2, but it's a really great editor and I've found it to be very VERY useful.

Zann Anderson on February 25, 2008 09:46 AM

hey i personally feel that smaller the app the cooler it is .
basically i have been owning a very slow system and everytime i need a functionality i check for the smallest,feature rich,program i could find .

tinyapps is one site i love for this matter . they find every tiny app that does the same thing .

and another text editor worth a note is WinVi , ( google for url ) , which can open really large text files and act upon em . really small and cool program .

BooTCaT on March 12, 2008 07:06 AM

Replace Notepad? Heck no you barbirians! (sorry if i misspelled that) Replacing Notepad is like replacing a very fast athelete with a snail.

Calvin on April 16, 2008 08:24 AM

Why are we commenting on a nearly four year old story?

Besides, Kate is the only GUI code editor anyone needs.

Dave on April 16, 2008 10:24 AM

Have you tried vim? It is just excellent and free.
http://www.vim.org/

Sarath on September 7, 2008 10:09 AM