14 DAY TRIAL // Text editing is a realm with a lot of competitors, and there's enough room for winners too. If we can have large office suites for free, like OpenOffice, I can only think about having simple text editing tools for free. Of course that some of these text editing tools come with a lot of features, but I see PSPad right in front of me and I calm down, because this is the best proof of the fact that you can get outstanding programs from this category for free.
Today, the time has come for FoxEditor. This program can be used under the terms of the GPL license, and its latest version is 0.7.5.0. Don't get fooled by this low version number, because I found this application to be well featured and reliable, especially for one that didn't reach its first "round" version, 1.0. FoxEditor's setup package weighs 1.1MB and was really easy to have the program installed and ready to go, and that's just great, because the interesting part is just about to begin...
First of all, I have to tell you that what we have here is a text editor that can use a single document interface or a multiple document interface, so if you don't like multiple tabs or just don't need to edit more than one file at once, you can use the SDI. The toolbars' graphics are excellent, and the elements of the interface are highly customizable. Apart from the usual menu, toolbars and text editing area, you can show or hide different panes that can help you check the results of your search, console output, explore your files or manage the files from the current project. Even better, you can apply visual themes, and despite the fact that FoxEditor comes with only two built-ins, the road to the ultimate interface customization is open now!
FoxEditor can edit only plain text files, but the list of supported extensions is very long, and when I say this, I am thinking about file types that can have their contents highlighted properly, because even Notepad can open and save a NSI install script, but it won't ever highlight its instructions! Even better than just opening and saving files, you can manage website projects or Delphi project, so this program can prove an interesting tool for the programmers.
OK, so we can edit a lot of files at once, organize them into a nice project, but unfortunately, there's no way to upload them to our server from inside the program, but as an addition to the supported files part, I will bring up the fact that you can export your current document to HTML and RTF files, which is excellent, because that will keep advanced text formatting.
What do you think about the chance of protecting only parts of your document using a password? Yes, you heard it right, FoxEditor can protect blocks of text with passwords up to 56 characters long, and the encryption can be done using one of the 15 methods available!
If you want to edit your webpages using this program, then feel free to go ahead! Although it won't beat Dreamwaver, FoxEditor can stand up and do a decent job, and all the features from the HTML menu are waiting to be discovered - fonts, paragraphs, tables, comments or colors are much easier to add now, despite the fact that you won't get any visual editing tools yet...
I am not the one to enjoy the Favorites feature inside the text editors I am using, because I really don't need it, but those of you who find such things useful should be happy, because FoxEditor has a Favorites menu, as well as the ability to check the spelling of your documents, run external programs with support for command line parameters (excellent for compiling programs, for example).
I don't know about you, but I was quite impressed by this text editing tool. If you don't have the time to try it, then make some time, because you have to try this one, but first, let's check the conclusions and screenshots, as usual!
The Good
FoxEditor is one of the best programs with version numbers smaller than "1" that I have ever tried - looks good, is easy to use, allows multiple file editing and has a lot of useful features.
The Bad
There is no serious documentation available at this time, and I couldn't figure out how to make the spellchecker work, because the link to the dictionaries page is dead...
The Truth
It seems there are more good free programs than I expected, and they are just waiting for you to reach out and grab'em. Today I am happy that I grabbed FoxEditor, and the only advice I can give you now is to do the same and, of course, enjoy it!
