EditPlus 2.31 Review

Text editing is one of those basic tasks that can be accomplished using a simple tool, an extremely advanced one, or something that keeps features, price and ease of use nicely balanced. It's like digging - you can use a shovel, some high tech device, or simply dynamite.

Anyway, I can't say that I have seen too many text editors to blow me away, but there's always a new one expecting to be tested just around the corner, and today's candidate is called EditPlus. If this program will manage to make fall off my chair, that's what remains to be seen...

Setup

EditPlus has reached version 2.31 so far, and this release is less than two months old. The trial can be downloaded and used freely for as long as a month. Other than that, there is no limitation during the trial period.










When reaching the install part, there's nothing special I would expect from a text editor's setup package. EditPlus comes in a self extracting file that's a bit smaller than 1MB, so downloading it should be a piece of cake for almost every computer user in this world, while the setup program looks a bit old, but the good part is that there are only a few steps to follow until EditPlus is all ready to go!

Interface

 All that I expect from most programs that I use is to be highly customizable and have the features I use frequently at hand, and not 5 or 6 clicks away. EditPlus managed to achieve these goals, but it's sad to see that the icons on the toolbar look so old, and the overall look of the main window is "dusty". I know it can't be done too much to enhance the interface of a text editor, but I've seen better, and that's what I want - at least some nice icons on the toolbar, first of all, would be great.

Features

The first thing I check with a text editor is the ability to edit multiple files at once. No problem with that, and I guess most of us won't reach the limit, as long as there's a decent one (for example, I can imagine someone editing 100, maybe even 300 files at once, but not 100,000!).

Of course that syntax highlighting is a very good feature, and also a "must have" for every commercial text editor out there. Again, nothing wrong with it, EditPlus has built in highlighting for HTML, CSS, PHP, Java and so on, but you can also create your own syntax files to support additional programming languages.

Do you need spell checking, a built in FTP client and, of course, a built in browser to preview your HTML pages? No problem, they are here, and that's not all!












As it happens with powerful text editors, the possibility to add user tools allows you to compile code from within EditPlus, and the auto-completion feature enables programmers or heavy duty writers to type in short abbreviations and have them turned into complete strings at once.Did I mention the cliptext window or the document templates? I guess not, but I'll leave to you the pleasure of discovering them, because I'm moving to the conclusions now.

The Good

EditPlus is a fast program, supports most features that I can wish to get from a text editor, and is also very easy to use and decently priced.

The Bad

I hope I'm not asking too much, but I want to get a better interface. After all, at least some new icons shouldn't be that hard to get...

Conclusion

EditPlus is one of those programs that can be useful to a very large crowd, starting with bloggers that need to be quick and have built in preview features and ending with programmers that work with huge projects and need project management capabilities. Since the price and features are not bad at all, you have to try it and then decide what to do next. I just hope this review helped you clear some things from the start. Good luck!

Developer: ES-Computing
Price: 30$
Trial Link: Download