#! code

Since starting programming I have used a lot of text editors, some have been good, and some have been very, very bad.

One text editor that stands out is PSPad. It is a free text editor for Windows that has lots of features and is very stable. I have been using this for a while now and have seen very little problems. I say "very little" as I once tried to open a 800 megabyte log file and it fell over, which is understandable.

It has the following features:

• Have many different files open with multi tabbed editing.
• Close and re-open the editor with the same files you had open.
• Built-in FTP client.
• Search and replace in files.
• A very neat text difference engine which highlights differences.
• Create new files from templates in HTML, PHP, Pascal, JScript, VBScript, MySQL, MS-Dos, Perl and a few more.
• Fully functional HEX editor.
• Intelligent syntax highlighting dependent on file type, which can be changed to any other syntax highlighting.
• Ability for users to create their own syntax highlighting.
• Print out text with coloured syntax highlighting.
• When typing you can press Ctrl and space to see a list of functions that start with what you have typed. This is an intelligent list so if you are writing in PHP you will be given a list of PHP functions.
• Built in code explorer that allows you to view functions and classes in your files. Created for PHP, XML, HTML, INI, C/C++ and Pascal, but more are in development.
• Spell checker.
• Auto correction of code.
• Bracket and tag matching.
• HTML code tidying and formatting.
• HTML entities and ASCII chart.
• Text manipulation with line sorting, removing blank lines and regular expression text replacing.
• Export text with syntax highlight to HTML, RTF, Tex format or to clipboard.
• Ability to link program with external compilers and capture error messages.
• Record, save and load macros to carry out repetitive tasks.
• Create a project so keep track of multiple files.
• Many more features besides these few.

Personally I find the bracket and tag matching extremely useful, and is a feature that makes it stand above professional text editors like Dreamweaver. If you are battling with your current text editor then give PSPad a go and see how easy it is.

Written by Philip Norton.

W3Schools is one of the best online tutorial sites available, but in addition to that, the site is completely free. When I can't remember how a particular bit of syntax goes I can be pretty much certain that I will find it on this site. There are thousands of examples, explanations, quizzes and reference charts available and they don't bog you down in too much detail. The examples on the site tell you exactly what you need to know about the subject so that you can copy the code and get on with the task at hand.

The site covers everything from web design with HTML, XHTML and CSS, client side scripting with JavaScript or VBScript, and even server side scripting with PHP or ASP. So if you are ever stuck on a problem or are trying to learn a language then you can do worse than reading through the examples contained in W3Schools.

When writing PHP I usually use the www.php.net site as this has more detailed information, but it is still an excelent resource for beginners of PHP.

Finally, although it is easy to think that W3Schools is run by the W3C, they completely independent.

Written by Philip Norton.