14 DAY TRIAL // What could be interesting about text editing? Some years ago, my answer would have been ?nothing?, but things have changed a little since then. A lot of text editing programs keep popping up, and some of them are really good. Free or commercial, you can find great text editors in both these categories, and my choice today goes towards a text editor that's free only for personal use and has a registration price of 25$, otherwise.
Textplorer, because this is the name of the text editor I am checking out now, is a program that reached version 1.22 and comes shaped as a 417KB setup package. There isn't much to say about it, but I'll try to give you a useful overview of its interface and features.
If we take Notepad as a reference point, this program's interface is not such a big step forward, as I expect with every new text editor that I hear about. The main reason is that you don't get any additional tool panes, and even worse, you can't edit more than one file at once. The interface has a menu bar, a toolbar and the editing area, this is it.
The funny part is that although this program doesn't allow multiple file editing, you can use the Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDon shortcuts to load previous and next files located in the same folder with the one currently opened. Even more, it will open any file, not only text files. Pretty cool, isn't it?
If you insert specific commands into the opened file, you can even compile and execute source code, for example Java files. The Search features are well done, including an item counter and an easy to use yet powerful Replace tool.
The Visible Character Codes tool can be a helpful feature, together with the Bookmarks and other small ones that I may have missed, but they'll be yours to discover.
As usual, although I wouldn't get my hands on this program again anytime soon, at least until its third final version, I recommend you to give it a chance, you never know where's the tiger hidden...
The Good
Textplorer is free, easy to use and does what it should, helping you edit and explore text files. If you won't use it for commercial purposes, you can enjoy it for as long as you like.
The Bad
I like simple things, but this is simple in a way that I don't like ? it misses simple features that I appreciate, like macros or multiple file editing! The Charset, Syntax and Structure features are not documented at all, since this program lacks even the most basic Help system, while the only option available in the menu item with the same name is the Tab size...
The Truth
I was looking for a text editor and I got one. What it happened with this program is like looking for a computer and finding a twenty year old 80286 system running at 12Mhz. If you want to perform basic text editing functions, than you can get this program and give it a try, but don't expect to get a second UltraEdit or PSPad here. In the end, it gets down to your decision, and my advice is to get Textplorer and give it a spin, you may find it more useful than I did.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
