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Even better... EditPad!

I mean, and this isn't even hypothetical, if no Notepad came with Windows, there'd be many, dozens of alternatives with marginally more features. This was the case even when Windows just came out, that applications with hardly more features were on the market. I don't know about the state of calculators, but certainly Notepad and Wordpad killed an entire marketplace.

Worst Example Ever.

And that's not including universal text editors like emacs and vi (as gVim). The examples I just threw out are considered the best in a big market, not the only replacements for notepad. Source

I have used regex in the past, mainly for keeping long SQL scripts. The problem is the lack of full support for regex in most of editors. IMO the best (for windows, at least) is the EditPad Pro.

Editpadpro would be a good place to start, it has Multi backup optins, and hidden history (creates a hidden __history folder and puts backup there), you can add a tool like svn/cvs with no pain. It has a tool option where you can make your own, very simple. If your looking at buying some kind of bulk, I'm willing to bet that Jan would add some kind of version control to the binary (database, cvs interface, local server, roll his own), or add the tool to your build. Download EditPadLight and open help, go to the index tab, and double click .bak (the first thing), it will take you to the page you want to see if it does what you want. Just a happy EditPadPro owner (for when I have to be on windows)

Editpadpro would be a good place to start, it has Multi backup optins, and hidden history (creates a hidden __history folder and puts backup there), you can add a tool like svn/cvs with no pain. It has a tool option where you can make your own, very simple. If your looking at buying some kind of bulk, I'm willing to bet that Jan would add some kind of version control to the binary (database, cvs interface, local server, roll his own), or add the tool to your build. Download EditPadLight and open help, go to the index tab, and double click .bak (the first thing), it will take you to the page you want to see if it does what you want. Just a happy EditPadPro owner (for when I have to be on windows)

... seems to do this well for a good price. http://www.editpadpro.com/index.html

Another good choice. For the lazy, here's the link to download that one:
http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadlite.html

• Openoffice.org (use word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, and similar applications)
• Picasa (view/edit photos)

Internet Tools

• FireFox (browse Web sites)
• Gaim (chat with users of AIM, YIM, MSN, IRC, etc.)
• Thunderbird (e-mail)
• Pegasus Mail (e-mail)
• Macromedia Flash Player (watch Flash animations within Web browser)
• Java Plugin (run Java applications inside Web browser)

Basic Tools

• 7Zip (compress/decompress files)
• EditPad Lite (edit text files)
• vim/gvim (edit text files--advanced)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader (view PDF files)
• PDF Creator (create PDF files)

Security Tools

• ZoneAlarm (firewall - detect unwanted Internet access)
• Avira Antivirus (detect/remove viruses)
• ADAware Personal SE (detect/remove spyware)
• SpyBot Search & Destroy (detect/remove spyware)
• HiJackThis (detect/remove spyware)
• Discombobulator (make Windows more secure)
• Shoot the Messenger (make Windows more secure)
• Unplug-n-pray (make Windows more secure)
• PGP (encrypt/decrypt files or e-mail for privacy) - see admin for more details

Advanced Tools

• Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel for Windows XP (mount ISO images as filesystems) from MSDN
• IMAPSize (manage/search/backup an IMAP mailbox)

http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadclassic.html

EditPad (I've been using Pro for several years now) is without a doubt the best editor available on Windows. There is a binary version available for *nix, which unfortunately for GNOME users, is compiled against Qt.

Features:

• Unlimited undo
• Syntax highlighting for most common languages (anyone could write a highlighting scheme for, say, brainf*ck if they wanted to)
• Almost unlimited simultaneous files open (my personal record: 784)
• PCRE-based search and replace
• Highly customizable interface
• Can use external executables/scripts to manipulate open files

In short, EditPad rules. The only features it lacks for me is a way to disable insert/overwrite mode switching. Folding would be nice too. Are you listening, Jan?

A true (X)HTML freak will probably use a sophisticated text editor (like EditPad for Windows, nedit, bluefish or even emacs for Linux...), but for beginners a tools like Dreamweaver or Mozilla Composer or its next version nvu might be a good place to start. With NVU / Mozilla Composer, if you need something special in your source, you can switch to source-edit-mode and change or insert it.

A big disadvantage of many hight-level tools is their inability to cope with PHP. (By the way, the parent is right to say that PHP is a much better beginner's choice, since it is not as cryptic in syntax.)

On the client's side, you might find javascript useful. With a HTML layout tool, PHP and javascript, you can probably do most pages.

Couldn't agree more. I'm a somewhat amateur C/C++ programmer, and I love using MSVC++ 6.0. The syntax highlighting, auto-indent, and file management are really the only features I use. I can code without them. I wrote (poor) PHP using Notepad for about a year, then found EditPad Pro, which does little more than syntax highlighting and auto-indenting (still use it for simple tasks like PHP and HTML editing), and have in the past year moved to MSVC++ for actual programming. I'm currently making a homebrew game for the PSP in C, but still use MSVC++ for the features I mentioned earlier.

I don't think that your IDE should affect how well-written the code you write is. If you write poor code, you're a bad programmer, regardless of your IDE. And if you're learning how to program using the IDE's auto-generated code... I look forward to seeing you on The Daily WTF soon.

On Windows I use EditPad I think it was one of the first to support tabing in a text editor. On OS X(Another great way to pep up windows, get rid of it)I have been using SubEthaEdit.

Windows and Linux versions.

Irfanview image viewer. Reads almost every image format known to man, and so much better than having IE pop up every time you want to view a JPEG or GIF! Also performs most every basic image edit (rotate, crop, sharpen, resize) that a basic home user would need, short of PaintShip Pro or Photoshop.

CDex MP3 ripper. IMO the best MP3 ripper out there. Uses the LAME codec. Also encodes to OGG, VQF, APE... And completely open source.

Editpad text editor. A replacement for the terrible Windows Notepad. Opens unlimited numbers of documents into a tabbed format. And has some nice little features, like header and footer options for printing, timestamps, ROT-13, etc. Also available for Linux...

Tools have given us incredible power over just about any language - C/C++, Perl, Java, etc. But does the average programer really understand what they're creating?

I've tried several IDEs for Java and Perl, and still end up back at my basic text editor (EditPadPro). Why? Because those IDEs tend to throw so much extra crap in my code, and I don't even know what that code is doing half the time! I don't know how many times I've seen programs that have every possible bell-and-whistle thrown in, but if I have a question about the code (why is this routine trying to connect to another computer?), the IDE author isn't sure. "Well, I just dragged it onto the tree, and there it was!".

The same can be said for most WYSIWYG HTML editors. I prefer using Dreamweaver, simply because I can easily look at the code I'm creating. But I am always leary to suggest Dreamweaver to someone with no HTML experience - where we have, we've ended up with 500k web pages with crap bouncing all over the screen.

Tool or no tool, there's no substitue for experience and knowledge.

The best HTML editor for windoze has to be EditPad. I've deleted notepad off my machine, which win2k really didn't like, and replaced it with this program.

It has the simplicity of notepad, with some excellent features, and it fits on a floppy.