In the seven years I have been designing web pages, I have experimented with several different HTML editors. I started out with notepad in 1999, back then I found it to be the best tool to design your creations, reason being it was the only program that gave you complete control over the presentation of your web pages. Between 1999 and 2002, I had tried and trialled many HTML editors ranging, from the full blown Dreamweaver to the insignificant and extremely crappy FrontPage. However, always found myself going back to notepad.

It was only when I started programming in other web languages in 2002, when notepad started to lose its appeal. I set out searching the internet for a bigger better text editor and found a lightweight program called EditPlus.

The two most loved of the many features listed below, include syntax highlighting for several different languages, and a very useful built in FTP client for editing your scripts on the fly.

• Extensible syntax high-lighting
  People write new syntax files all the time, and you just drop them in the program directory. I was looking the other day, and there's about 200 different syntax files out there.
• Localized FTP
  You can connect to an FTP site as if it was a local folder. Whenever you hit "Save," the file is seamlessly FTP'ed out.
• Cliptext options
  Write a certain text structure a lot? You can save that structure, and insert it with a click of a button with the text insertion cursor at exactly the right spot.
• Extensible templates
  You can save "shells" of file types you work on a lot (a blank HTML page, an empty Java class, etc.) and start a new one from "File > New…"
• Backup options
  You can tell EditPlus that, whenever you save, save an extra copy of that file to a certain folder. You never see it happen, never even think about it, but on more than one occasion, this little treasure trove of old files has saved my ass.
• Command line integration
  You can configure a button to run a command line program with the file you're working as the first argument.

Further more, its very lightweight and it works well under Wine, and has great support for regular expressions and macros.

This text editor does a lot. Software this useful and easy to use is a rarity. It is free to try and $29 USD to register. I guarantee it's worth every cent.