A coworked turned me onto Notepad++ for my development needs recently, and I’m very impressed with the functionality.  Previously, I was using a WAY OLD version of EditPad from JG Soft, but was constantly running into situations during development where more functionality could be of use.  Being the cheapo that I am, I didn’t feel like paying to upgrade the product.

Notepad++ has a lot of features for a free product.  Some really cool things include being able to select “rectangles” of text, indent multiple lines in one keypress, auto-indenting, source code type selections and color coding, and the list goes on.  I haven’t even begun to figure out all of the options yet.

Language Formatting Options

I’m already using this as my tool of choice for programming in PHP, but you can see from the screenshot that many other programming formats are available.

Visit the site to download a free copy of Notepad++.

Site URL: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
Screenshots: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/screenshots.php