Even though there are great web authoring tools like DreamWeaver, or open source KompoZer, I still prefer to use powerful text editors when working on PHP, HTML or CSS. My preferred text editor is Notepad++.
Notepad++ is a free source code editor that supports several languages. Download the latest version from Source Forge or get the latest portable version from PortableApps.com
Notepad++ supports almost all languages including C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, ASP, VB/VBS, SQL, Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Smalltalk, Postscript, VHDL, Ada, Matlab, YAML,etc..
User Defined Syntax Highlighting – Provides syntax highlighting keywords, the syntax folding keywords, comment keywords and the operators.
Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting – When the caret stay beside of one of those symbol { } [ ] ( ) , the symbol beside of caret and its symmetric opposite symbol will be highlighted, as well as the indent guideline (if any) in order to locate the block more easily.
Plugins – Supports plugins. Notepad++ comes with default plugins for compare, FTP connection so that I can directly edit files in the web server, Light Explorer for viewing the directory structure within Notepad++, Spell Checker, TextFX plugin for all the text processing functionality you will ever need.
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Macro recording and playback – You can save several macros and edit their keyboard shorcuts for the next use. You can edit and assign shortcuts to your macros at “Settings->Shortcut Mapper”. From there, select the corresponding tab and right click on the macro or run command. From there you can edit or remove said item.
Auto-completion – Download or create his/her own API list and launch auto-completion by pressing Ctrl+Space.
Regular Expression Search/Replace supported – You can search and replace one string in the document by using the regular expression.
Multi-Document – You can edit several documents at the same time.
Multi-View – You can edit 2 different documents at the same time.
Full Drag & Drop supported – You can open a document by drag & drop.
File Status Auto-detection – If you modify or delete a file which opened in Notepad++, you will be notified to reload the file or remove the file.
Bookmark – User can just click on the bookmark margin or type Ctrl+F2 to toggle a book mark. To reach the bookmark, type just F2 (Next bookmark) or Shift+F2 (Previous bookmark). To clear all bookmarks, click the Menu Search->Clear All bookmarks.
Column mode selection – Alt-Shift-Arrow keys or Alt + left mouse click enables column mode. There is also a column editor, Alt+C, which allows you to replace the text selected in column mode with either some text, or with incrementing numbers in various bases.
You can install Notepad++ in Ubuntu by through WINE. You can also use the python script which installs Notepad++ on Debian/Ubuntu, or any other distro that uses apt-get. http://code.google.com/p/npp-installer/
Download the latest version of Notepad++ from Source Forge or get the latest portable version from PortableApps.com and start using it today.
Which tools do you edit your script sources?
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