As I was doing an overview of the TextMate product for my tip yesterday, I noticed TextMate offers a nice collection of user submitted themes. Some of these I really liked (i.e Fake and Plastic Code Wrap) and would love to be able to use them in my text editor of choice, Notepad++. With the help of the “Textmate theme to Notepad++ styler” tool, this is not only possible, it is incredibly easy.

This tool, quite simply, takes in a TextMate style source and outputs a style source for Notepad++. For instructions, take a look at this post which walks you through the entire process.

I haven’t had a chance to get to this yet, but I am going to be giving this a shot as I find black backgrounds much easier on the eyes.

If you run your own web site and run Perl, PHP scripts or the like, there will be instances where you have to edit some files from time to time.

The long way to do it is to download the file you need to edit, modify it, then upload it back.

The short way is to edit the file "live" on the server directly. Using Notepad++ this is easy to do with it’s built-in FTP feature.

First, enable FTP folders by clicking the small yellow folder icon at top:

You will see a right and bottom pane appear, similar to this:

In the FTP Folder window at right, click the settings icon (the gray one that looks like a gear).

You’ll get a window like this:

Click New (bottom left button) to start a new profile.

Enter Profile as the friendly name you want to remember this FTP server by, such as "My FTP Server".

Enter Address as the FTP server you want to connect to, followed by your username and password.

If using Windows XP, you don’t have to set anything else up.

If using Vista or 7, you do have to set the Use profile cache directory to a local writable folder (such as My Documents for your local Windows account). If you don’t do this, you will not be able to edit any files "live".

When done, click OK.

To the left of the settings icon you clicked is a blue plug-looking icon:

Clicking this will bring up your server list. It will show the entry you just created. Click your entry and you will establish an FTP session with your server.

From there you can double-click any file you want (as long as it’s text based) to edit, seen below.

After double-clicking a file it will open in the editor as a tab (each successive file you open will create more tabs). Make your edits, then save the file with the save button or CTRL+S, and it will be saved direct-to-server.

Microsoft seem to produce versions of Windows so quickly these days that before you can manage to get used to the one that they seemingly only just produced; they’re beta testing another.

(If you look back to the turn of the century you’ll notice that the situation was rather similar: 2000 followed ME, (Or was it the other way round? It all happened so fast!) which was closely followed by XP – Then a big long six-year gap…And Vista: FAIL.)

There are a few things that never change though; and here I refer particularly to Notepad. Unchanging, primitive, basic, functional, simple. But even the MS-DOS text editor that’s been around since the year dot is more capable.

In Windows 7, that’s going to change at last. Notepad is getting an overhaul.

Notepad 2008 is a piece of software that brings to you the best of the proposed Windows 7 notepad design. Not only does it come with several inbuilt themes with which it is possible to customize it to your liking to a certain extent, but it has the Office 2007 ribbon feature, and a tabbed interface in order to simplify the job of editing files even further

Notepad 2008 doesn’t require installation. I unzipped the program in XP to its own folder in Program Files, created a shortcut to the .exe file which I placed on the desktop and from which I run it. It is freeware, too.

On that note, I’d recommend you download it, unzip it, and use it.

Text editors are obviously not very exciting in the world of computers, however there are times when they’re absolutely necessary to get things done. For example, if you have ever dabbled in programming, used HTML, custom-made your own Cascading Style Sheet or the like, an advanced and fast text editor is required otherwise it takes twice as long to get things done.

For Windows there is no better text editor than Notepad++ (pronounced as it looks: “Notepad Plus Plus”). Once you start using it you’ll never use plain ol’ Windows Notepad ever again.

There are many perks to using Notepad++. Here’s a few of them:

• Syntax highlighting (color coding for specific programming languages)
• WYSIWYG
• Auto-completion
• Multi-document environment (as in tabs)
• Drag’n'drop support
• Zoom in/out
• Macro record/playback

There’s a lot more that this editor can do but you get the idea.

You can download Notepad++ from here. It’s free and ready to rock.

We all know that Windows comes with a simple text editor called Notepad. Notepad works, but it is severely feature limited. Some die-hard nerds swear by it. Power in simplicity, they say. Others want something more. In this article, I will outline several high-power replacements for Notepad. If you want to engage in some serious use of text files or do some programming, check these out.

Continued