Just Say No to Notepad

Like PrimalScript and VbsEdit+JsEdit, EditPlus is designed primarily as scripting editor. However, whereas PrimalScript and VbsEdit+JsEdit are mainly oriented toward administrative scripting, EditPlus is oriented more toward Web development.

Like the other editors in this review, EditPlus installed quickly and easily with no problems. Its stronger Web orientation gave it a decidedly different look and feel from the other editors. When EditPlus first opens, a multitabbed toolbox displays on the left side of the screen and the primary edit pane displays on the right side. The Directory tab in the toolbox presents a Windows Explorer­like window containing a directory list. The Cliptext tab presents a list of code snippets for HTML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and ANSI control characters.

EditPlus supports the editing of multiple documents in the edit pane. The editor lists the documents' names in taskbar buttons along the bottom of the window, as Figure 4 shows.

EditPlus is a very good general-purpose editor, with unlimited undo and redo capability. You can record and run macros, perform spell checks, set and navigate to bookmarks, and view rendered HTML source code in an integrated browser window. Other useful code-editing features include line numbering, a ruler, word counts, byte counts, and column-mode editing. EditPlus's column-mode editing isn't quite as easy to use as TextPad's block-mode editing because you need to define column markers, but you can perform the same type of cut-and-paste operation.

EditPlus doesn't support as many languages as PrimalScript. By default, EditPlus supports color-coded syntax for VBScript, Perl, HTML, Active Server Pages (ASP), CSS, PHP, C, C++, Java, and JavaScript. In addition, unlike any of the other three editors, you can extend EditPlus's language support by providing your own syntax template.

EditPlus supports autocompletion for Perl, C, and C++. The autocompletion feature automatically fills in keywords when you begin to type a recognizable string. As with the color-coded-syntax feature, you can manually extend this support to other languages. Like PrimalScript, EditPlus groups related files together into projects. Although the ES-Computing product doesn't offer integrated debugging capabilities or source-control options, its integrated Web browser and the ability to use FTP to seamlessly transfer files make it a good choice for Web development.

If you're a serious scriptwriter, do yourself a favor and try PrimalScript. Of the editors I reviewed, PrimalScript is the clear winner for writing Windows scripts. Although it's quite expensive at $179, PrimalScript provides a powerful, extensible toolset that will help you write scripts in VBScript, Perl, and just about any other popular scripting language.

If you no longer want to use Notepad for scripting but can't afford PrimalScript, consider buying TextPad. At $29, TextPad is a far less expensive editing alternative. Although it doesn't offer the same advanced scripting-specific features that PrimalScript possesses, it's a very capable general-purpose editor.

VbsEdit+JsEdit is an effective editor for VBScript and JScript files, but it isn't the same caliber as PrimalScript or TextPad. At $30, VbsEdit+JsEdit certainly costs less than PrimalScript but lacks many of its features, including support for multiple languages. Although VbsEdit+JsEdit costs nearly the same as TextPad and does a better job with VBScript and JScript development than TextPad, VbsEdit+JsEdit's general-editing capabilities are more limited.

EditPlus is a good scripting editor for administrators who need to do Web development. Its Web development features are stronger than the other editors', but its administrative scripting support is not as strong as that offered by PrimalScript. Its built-in support is better for Perl than VBScript.