22 Neat Code Editors for Windows
Code editors for Windows are numerous, but it seems that only a few of them are really worth using. After all, it can take a while to really get into the groove of an editor and tweak all the settings to your tastes, so you’d better find one you like!
I should mention that the features I’ve called out for each editor are only the prominent ones; obviously, there are many more. Also, just because I’ve mentioned a feature on one editor and not another doesn’t mean the second one doesn’t have the feature. So let’s get to it! I’ve arranged them from least to most expensive.
Notepad++
- http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net
- v 5.3.2 | Free
This is probably the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes. I’ve used the editor as my main editor quite a bit, and one of my favourite features is File Status Auto-detection: when NP++ is made the active program, it will check all currently open files for changes and let you know if any file has been updated / deleted. Notepad++ is based on the Scintilla editing component.
JEdit
- http://jedit.org
- v 4.20 | Free
Jedit is rather ugly in my opinion, but it has a decent feature set; as a Java program, it’s actually multi-platform. It offers syntax highlighting for over 130 languages. The website says it supports folding, but I couldn’t get that to work (although it does highlight the opposite bracket). Jedit has a plugin repository, which may give the editor a bit more functionality.
Notepad2
- http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html
- v 3.0.20 | Free
Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like, and offers syntax highlighting for a variety of languages. There’s no installation for this editor: just unzip and run. There are a few modified versions (with more features / languages) available.
Programmer’s Notepad
- http://pnotepad.org
- v 2 0.9.926 | Free
Programmer’s Notepad has a similar interface to that of Notepad2, although it does support having multiple files open at once. It supports bookmarking, folding, and highlighting, but other than that, there isn’t too much to mention.
Crimson Editor
- http://www.crimsoneditor.com/
- v 3.7 | Free
Crimson Editor offers macro support and the ability to execute external programs. It has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker and a neat ‘column select’ mode.
ConTEXT
- http://www.contexteditor.org/
- v 0.98.5 | Free
ConTEXT supports many languages, both programming and human; it also gives you the ability to define your own custom languages. It does file comparing and exporting to HTML, and includes some interesting behaviour for projects. Another neat thing: ConTEXT remembers where your cursor is when you close a file, and puts it back there when you re-open the file.
SciTE
- http://gisdeveloper.tripod.com/scite.html
- v 1.77 | Free
SciTE is a really simple text editor, based on Scintilla. It’s quite basic, but it does support syntax highlighting for around 30 languages and regular expression search and replace.
Editra
- http://editra.org/
- v 0.4.88 | Free
Editra claims to be in the early stages of development, but it offers a decent bunch of features: user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others.
PSPad
- http://www.pspad.com/en/
- v 4.5.3 | Free
PSPad brings templates, an interesting internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. PSPad offers integration with TopStyle Lite, which may come in handy if you use it for writing CSS.
RJ TextEd
- http://www.rj-texted.se/
- v 5.10 | Free
RJ TextED, too, offers integration with TopStyle Lite; and it does HTML validation and formatting. It sports an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email.
SourceEdit
- http://www.brixoft.net/prodinfo.asp?id=1
- v 4 | Free
SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client beef this one up a bit, too. Oh, and it does macros, too.
TotalEdit
- http://www.codertools.com/totaledit.aspx
- v 5.2 | Free
TotalEdit does file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. You can install TotalEdit on a USB drive, making it portable, if you want; you can also easily send the current document as an email.
Emacs
- http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
- v 22.3 | Free
“Beyond just being able to edit plain text files, Emacs includes special features to help you write in many different programming and markup language. Emacs can compare two files and highlight their differences. Emacs is a file manager. Emacs can read news, mail, and RSS feeds. You can even play tetris in Emacs. You might see now why some people consider Emacs to be not merely a text editor but almost a complete operating system. Some users find that they can do almost all of their work from within Emacs.”
Vim
- http://www.vim.org/
- v 7.2 | Free
Vim is an incredibly complex text editor, more similar to Emacs than any others on our list (although Vim and Emacs users seem to be somewhat at odds ). I don’t think I could do it justice in a few sentences, considering that there have been whole volumes written on it (not to mention that I have only a cursory knowledge of Vim). Suffice it to say that Vim probably has every feature mentioned in this article, and a few hundred more. For starters, check out “Vim in 6K”
Bespin
- http://bespin.mozilla.com
- v 0.2.2 | Free
I know Bespin isn’t really a Windows text editor, and it hardly has the feature set that other editors do, but I thought I’d throw it into the mix just because I really like the concept of an online text editor and because it has one big (obvious) feature that the rest don’t: cloud access to your code. It also offers syntax highlighting for HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Textpad
- http://www.textpad.com/products/textpad/index.html
- v 5.2.0 | $24.70
TextPad is a rather simplistic editor: it boasts column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files (based on the size of your virtual memory). That’s it? Well, the feature list also mentions a right-click menu.
E-Text Editor
- http://www.e-texteditor.com/
- v 1.0.30 | $34.96
This is one of the most interesting editors, mainly because of the ‘foreign’ features it brings to Windows:
“Close integration with cygwin [a Linux-like environment for Windows] gives you access to the full range of UNIX shell tools and lets you extend e with your choice of languages like Ruby, Perl, Python and more.”
Another one of e’s strong points is that it accepts TextMate bundles; it also supports revision control, so you don’t have to keep track of multiples versions of a file.
In-Type
- http://intype.info
- v 03.x (alpha) | currently free, to be ~ $25 – $45
Intype is a pretty neat little editor that’s still in development. It currently doesn’t have a whole lot of features (you can’t even drag and drop text), but it looks like it will be pretty slick. It does snippets really well, and already offers a pretty wide selection, as well as supporting about two dozen languages (with support for creating additional ones). Keep an eye on this one; it’s promising.
EditPlus
- http://www.editplus.com/
- v 3.10 | $35.00
EditPlus doesn’t have anything unique, but there are some niceties: it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Macros and RegEx find and replace are good to have as well.
HippoEDIT
- http://www.hippoedit.com
- v 1.42 | $39.95
HippoEDIT offers something a bit different when it comes to autocomplete: in pops a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen languages, and includes code templates for many of those languages. HippoEDIT also has customizable keyboard shortcuts and workspace layouts.
UltraEdit
- http://www.ultraedit.com/products/ultraedit.html
- v 15. | $49.95
UltraEdit almost seems more like an IDE than a text editor; there are hundreds (easily thousands) of features packed into this one. Obviously reaching out to more than just web developers, UltraEdit is ultra-customizable, with different ‘environments’ to choose from, depending on what job you’re doing. Supposedly “nearly every editing task” is automatable. UltraEdit also supports FTP and has a built-in SSH/telnet console for accessing your servers.
Sublime Text
- http://www.sublimetext.com
- v 1.05 | $59.00
Sublime Text is probably one of the most fun editors that I looked at, mainly because of its super-cool ‘zoomed out’ view of the file that you can pan around on. One drawback is that the preferences dialog is really just a bunch of text files; this can make it a bit difficult to tweak settings if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. I like the option to open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor.
Extras
While reseaching for this article, I found a few other related things. First off, text editors are good for more than coding: they provide an excellent environment for writing content. To that end, you might want to check out WriteMonkey, Q10, or DarkRoom. These editors aren’t very good for coding, but are great for writing copy with minimal distractions.
Then, for some interesting tips on text editing, check out the video “Seven Habits for effective Text Editing 2.0″ by the creator of Vim.
That’s it!
I’d love to hear what text editor you use, and why; chances are, I missed a few good ones. Let me know in the comments!
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Also here are my favorite jEdit features:
http://jonaquino.blogspot.com/2007/08/why-jedit-text-editor-rocks.html
Wheres EDITPAD?!?! It rocks!
Agreed! It is pretty much all I use know for editing. Love its regex, ability to handle large files, and it is pretty fast, even on 100MB files.
This is definitely (a good) list of basic text editors for windows.
IDEs like netbeans, eclipse and etc are far more superior and provide more features that benefits and satisfied an intermediate/advanced user.
I myself have used notepad++, scite, crimson and e-texteditor and I was never satisfied with them when I reached the point where rapid development was an important aspect of my business.
IDEs definitely helps a lot with its auto-complete support and the built-in debugging tools.
great post, Notepad2 all the way
Has anyone got any experience with a good editor for Windows 7?
Aptana doesn’t seem to be loving it so gotta find a new editor with good php / js hinting…
cheers!
E-Texteditor and intype rules :)
I’m a E-Text editor user….. and it rocks really much!
For Flash Developers:
http://www.flashdevelop.org/
Very very nice text editor, excelent support for as2, as3, and general flash IDE
It also has some of the best code hinting/autocomplete features of any text editor/ide I’ve used.
TextPad is pretty great… a few other features i like it for:
– assign shortcut keys to run commands (like compile and run java, javadoc)
– clip library
– compare files
– hugely customisable
– match brackets
– huge library of syntaxes (you can add more too)
but it is lacking some pretty basic things like code folding. and its not free and notepad++ can probably do all of this and more
I still use the pre-Java Arachnophilia 4.0 text editor. I like the simple interface, the regular expression search and replace, and it is light on resources.
whitch one of them helps you write the rest of the code like dreamweaver when you start typing somthing and comes up with different options and you can just choose one rather than keep writing wrong?
What’s the best editor for python in a windows environment. I am getting tired of using the pythonwin that comes with activestate python.
try drpython, i like it
notepad++ or crimson is good too… i like crimson mainly because it has a directory browser built into it… notepad++ has more features but no directory browser.
great!
Vote +1 for Notepad++ since i have used it since i was in university (5 years ago?)
This has to be the lamest article that has been posted to net tuts.
There are a lot of other great editors that have been missed out and the descriptions for each editor are brief and don’t provide a lot of information.
Notetab? Where is it? Some good editors here, but there are better! :)
Great list, thanks.
I like the list. I have never used most of them….
But i like to use visual editor most…
I am using Notepad++ because it is powerful and fast. You can even download different color style that meet you own needs!
emeditor
I am using Notepad++, but wanna try Komodo too :)
Gotta say .. One of the things I love about Dreamweaver (apparently not on list, but worth mentioning) is the fact that DW automatically opens up all externaly added files, such as .css and .js ..
But after reading through this article, i’ve set my love on Sublime Text .. I love the little Navigator scroll bar on the left side.
@wez
For python you can try Komodo wich exists in free and pro version or wingide
Eclipse PDT with Xdebug and Intype for html, css files
Anyone mentioned Zend Studio Professional? When it’s about advanced projects it comes to be the best by far.
It’s not for free though.
What About Devunity(http://www.devunity.com/)?
The y have a cool online text editor that you could share with friends and code LIVE!!
I liked it.
You forgot to mention most of the exciting features in PSPad like FTP and Projects…
Indeed. That prog amazes me time and time again…
I almost use the Eclipse editor. I like the refactor functions in it which are very useful and great.
Shall we also get a post about the best code editors for Mac?
Great list, thanks! One glaring omission, as has been mentioned previously in the comments, is Komodo Edit. Free and runs great (in my experience) on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (Ubuntu).
For those who may not know, Komodo Edit does provide a kind of “live preview” split view, which is quite useful. Just provide it with your development server URL, and when you save it refreshes for you etc. Handy!
I’m using e-texteditor. It’s awesome but sadly it’s still buggy. Komodo is also great, and so is Notepad++
which one of those does have the option to display a folder/file tree on a sidepane (like in explorer). sorry, but i don’t have time to test every, it would be great if someone could answer me. just looking for something like textmate under windows. no complicated “new project” – “add files to project” – etc. my project is a folder and i want to open that folder.
thanks.
e-texteditor, it even claims to be “textmate for windows”
I just looked at EmEditor, and it appears to have the features you are looking (and a lot of others). I’ve used Notepad Pro in the past, but EmEditor seems to have much more functionality.
EmEditor is another nice choice.
I primarily use Dreamweaver, but Notepad++ and Crimson Editor are pretty good.
Now if I didn’t have a copy of Dreamweaver with CS I definitely wouldn’t drop the cash on it. Not worth it when compared to the other free choices.
Agreed. Dreamweaver is a fantastic editor, but so are a lot of these free ones.. while DW might be a little bit stronger, I wouldn’t say it’s $200 stronger.
Programmer’s Notepad 2 does allow you to have multiple files open at once. I have tried 17 of the editors on the list and I’m sticking with Programmer’s Notepad.
andrew, here is a great editor for those who like really light-weight stuff and enjoy using vi like i do!
it’s called winvi or winvi32
http://www.winvi.de/en/
Notepad2 / InType are probably the only ones I use, I wish InType could reach a final release but it seems a bit far sadly! Once InType brings more features I’ll be changing editors (from notepad2 to intype, for big projects I just use Netbeans)
As for jEdit being ugly wasn’t there an option to change the swing look and feel to GTK/windows ? I remember using it but can’t recall the memory :(
Homesite+…FTW!! I know that Adobe hides it on their site and has integrated many of it’s features into DW but I just can’t get away from it. It rocks. I’m old…sorry. :-P
I would stick to HS forever (select full tag, no one has it!!)
But it has some major bugs on UTF-8 file editing…a big issue if you work with XML/XSL :(
Emacs of course. It can do anything and everything, even be an IDE if that is your persuasion.
Nvu is worth a mention
What about Eclipse? :)
I know it has been said a bunch already, but you missed Komodo Edit. I switched from Notepad++ to it a couple months ago and haven’t looked back. It is brilliant.
Auto complete, remote file access, and custom themes are so great. It is very light weight and quick too.
I’m an intype user and love it! I’ve customized is so much that i have my own set of snippets which i just trigger with key combos. It does have a few basic things missing but most of them should be implemented on the next release.
As for dreamweaver, well to me its just too much – i can’t justify loading an app thats over 100meg to do build sites and apps.
notepad++
Used Dreamweaver (all versions) for years. Tried several of the above mentioned, but found e-texteditor to be the best. E is lightweight, affordable, and has great features. The ability to highlight multiple words and edit, and edit multiple lines at one time is simply amazing.
Also used Aptana on PC and Mac, but found it too bloated. Thanks E!
Very helpful I personnaly use eclipse and NetBeans IDEs for every thinks I do, it Support pretty much every langage ….
I must admit to using Dreamweaver for most of my code but there is one editor that really impresses me and I am surprised that it wasn`t mentioned; the Web Developer Tool Bar for Fire Fox.
The main feature I like is the editor for css, as you change the css using the Web Developer Tool Bar, it actually makes live changes to the HTML you see. This is fantastic when you need to do the task of lining everything up pixel perfect….left a bit, right a bit…is a lot easier when you see it change instantly.
Come on editors, can you give us something like this?
wow great list thanks….
Didn’t know 20 of them :D
Andrew,
Thanks!!!! I just read your article yesterday, and I decided to try Notepad++. I’m already 2/3 done with a small project using it, and you’re right, it’s hot.
I had actually been using PSPad, which is quite nice, but it will crash in certain circumstances, and the new one is definitely nicer.
I really appreciate the good ideas!!!!!
I still use dream weaver but thx ;)
Cool thing about VIM is everything in vim is/can be operated by the keyboard, that’s what makes it special. If you get good you can move really fast I got to admit. It does take a while to learn though.