14 DAY TRIAL // I really hope that all the people that are using PSPad at this time will get rich enough to afford donating at least 100$ to the developer, because this program really rocks! When sun will shine bright in my wallet, I'll do it right away, because this program is one of the best text editors I have ever seen. Anyway, let's leave my sweet obsession aside and move on to the text editor I have prepared for today...
Sometimes you get good things for free, and sometimes you don't, and today, the time has come for a new commercial product, a text editor, to be more precise. Its name is XXLEdit and the version I have here is labeled 1.95. If you want to purchase it, you'll have to pay 29.95$ for it, but otherwise, you can use the shareware version for a month, and I must tell you that I didn't spot any functional limitations to it. The setup package has 1.38MB in size and installing the program shouldn't be much of a problem, since I am sure even my mom can do it without any hassle.
First of all, what we should check here is the program's interface, and I can't find anything bad to say about it. What we have here is a good looking program, and its main window has everything you may ever need when using a text editor and also a little more. Most of the interface elements can be hidden and shown as you need - the Standard and Format toolbars, the Hints Panel or the useful Side Notes panel. All the graphics look good and the best part is that you can organize a lot of data easily using this program, and this takes us to the next step: features.
XXLEdit can edit multiple files at once, and each one of them can be accessed clicking its tab once, but you can also use the classic keyboard shortcuts if you feel better with them. After all, the best text editor is the one that keeps your wasted time amount to its lowest and lets you concentrate on writing instead of formatting text, managing files and so on.
The editor I am talking about here supports full RTF formatting and also has improved features for editing HTML files. Apart from the RTF and HTML files, XXLEdit can also open and save XML, TXT and EML documents.
A good thing to have that keeps popping up more and more often into the text editors I get to see is the ability to manage large projects that can have tens, hundreds or maybe even thousands of files. To the left of the editing area, you can find a tools pane that has a lot of tools, and the only thing that I would like to see there and I wasn't able to find is a FTP client. Anyway, the ability to manage email contacts, project goals, files, snippets and links, the HTML Tags panel that lets you quickly add tags to the Web pages you are editing and, at least, the TaskPane, should be enough to make you forget about not having a FTP client here.
The selections can be done using the mouse and the keyboard, as usual, but you can also select entire lines(Ctrl+L) or individual words(Shift+Ctrl+Space). After selecting and replacing, another operation that you will use often when editing text files is inserting different characters, current date and time and more. XXLEdit can help you choose favorite text and expressions, add smiles (unfortunately there aren't as many text smiles as I would like to have here), Roman numbers from one to ten, quote, star and lowline pairs, various signs (copyright, section or inverted exclamation mark), but it doesn't stop here!
Unfortunately, I still wasn't able to find a replacement for my eyes, so a text editor without the zoom function is not the one for me. Fortunately, inside XXlEdit, you can zoom in and out between 6 and 400 percent of the original, which is excellent.
If you want to look for a word or an expression on Google, nothing easier! Just select the mysterious text, and then use the Google Search tool - you can find it inside the Search menu or use the Shift+Ctrl+Alt+G keyboard shortcut.
The Reports feature is also a strong point of this program, XXLEdit being able to output reports about recent files, folders, history items, but the most important report for me is that on the auto correct operations performed by the program.
If you think that this sounds complicated, then just wait and see, because there's more to see, and words are much too small for describing this great program called XXLEdit! These being said, let's move on to the conclusions...
The Good
XXLEdit is an excellent tool for people working with large projects and having to manage a lot of additional notes, but anyone can use it effectively in a short time, because of its great interface, ease of use and features.
The Bad
I was very surprised to see that, despite the fact that you get some useful tips, you won't get a comprehensive Help file, and that's a real shame.
The Truth
XXLEdit is one of those excellent text editors that I have met so far, and they only have one major problem for me: the price. I know, I know, I may sound repetitive, but I can't help myself - PSPad is free, and until I will find a paid program that's twice better than that, I'll stick to it. Nevertheless, XXLEdit is a program worth trying and, if you have the money and discover it suits all your needs, you can take your chance and buy it, those money won't be spent in vain!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
