by Ken Knepple 

Notepad++ 3.1 is classified as freeware which is great for me considering it has my favorite word in it. Notepad++ publisher is Don Ho and its latest version delivers an even greater web development tool than the previous versions. The latest 3.1 delivers new features while fixing some bugs the v3.0 possessed. Essentially Notepad++ is a source code editor which supports several programming languages under the Windows environment. There a large amount languages supported by Notepad++: CSS, C, C++, Java, batch files, C#, XML, PHP, Javascript, HTML, RC resource files, Lua, nfo, makefile, doxygen, ini file, ASP, SQL, Objective-C, VB/VBS, Pascal, Perl, and Python.

Notepad++ is small in size in that it is 723 KB. The download will be rather quick no matter what mode of travel it will be taking. Notepad++ is a very nice upgrade of Windows Notepad. I wanted to give it a quick try so I went to website and viewed the source code that opened up in the new interface. The software has a different look and feel that makes its presence felt right away. If you are unhappy with the default preferences, there are a number of preferences for you to choose from that will allow you to customize the interface more suitable to a format you like. Notepad++ also adds the feature of syntax highlighting in a color coded convention. Being new and not knowing all of the standards, terminology, and lingo it would be a nice feature for Notepad++ to offer an explanation as to what the different colors indicate.

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There are is a decent amount of tools for you to customize the look and the feel of this source code editor. You can choose to collapse areas of code to eliminate areas that are not critical to view from time to time. There are different options available to format the toolbars. If you are really ambitious there are macro tools available for you to program that you can execute at a click of the mouse. There is also find and replace tools that become an essential tool with large source code files that need to be edited quickly. The keyboard shortcuts available will also let you work a little quicker once you are able to learn them, and if you don’t feel like learning them you can edit the controls to the way you like them by using the Shortcut Mapper.

This tool is highly customizable, fast loading, and free. If at the very least it is nice for any pc user to have just to replace the current Notepad, but it is also a tool that any programmer or webmaster should consider giving a try.

Visit the Notepad++ v3.1 Website to get your copy and try it out for yourself.

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