Download/HomepageThere are three different programs in the NoteTab family. First, there's the Light version, which is a free, but very powerful, text editor. Then there's the commercial version, for $9.95, which is basically the same as the Light one, but with a spell checker and thesaurus. Finally there's the power house which is NoteTab Pro.
While the other versions of NoteTab are good replacements for Notepad, the Pro version is verging into word processor territory. If you can live without the fancy DTP capabilities of the big word processors, then NoteTab Pro has all the features you'll need.
With all singing, all dancing word processors, such as WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and Lotus WordPro around, why would you want to use a text editor? There could be a number of reasons, the main ones being that the files are small, and are portable between systems and other programs.
You can customize most features of the program, from text colors, to tool bar and menu commands. A nice touch is the built in scripting language, so if the feature isn't there, you can add it yourself.
One of the most important features is the clipbook. The clipbook is where you can store text or scripts. To use a clip you can either click on it, or if you have auto-replace enable, just type the name and the computer inserts it for you. This is used to great effect with the AutoCorrect feature. If you often mistype words, all you need to do is tell the program what you normally type (e.g. "review") and what it should be (e.g. "review"), and it will automatically change it for you.
As HTML documents are basically ASCII documents, with extra bits, it's obvious for programmers to add HTML features to text editors. NoteTab Pro is as good as any dedicated HTML editor I've seen, it's only lacking Java, Javascript and FTP capabilities. The tags can be selected from the clipbook, either by clicking them or using auto replace. The file is color coded to make it easier to understand. When you've done you file, you can view it in your web browser.
So, what are the differences between the Light and the Pro versions. The most obvious is the spell checker and thesaurus. The overall speed of the program has been increased, although there's nothing wrong with the Light version, the Pro version really zips along. You can also view non-printing characters (i.e. carriage returns, tabs and spaces). If you're using a large document, you can use book marks to help navigate around it. As I said earlier, the program color codes HTML, it also color codes URLs in normal documents. For some reason, the Pro version can't use files bigger than 16MB, or paragraphs bigger than 32KB - compared to the Light's 2GB for both, but I would have thought 16MB is big enough for most people.
At $19.95, this is an absolute bargain. Trust me, I've seen programs for this price which don't even have the features of the Light version, let alone the Pro version. If you use a text editor on a regular basis, this the program you should be using.
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