Colorado State University

For the past decade or so, I have been stuck using the default Notepad application that comes pre-installed on every Windows computer.  For my purposes, the ‘Development Suite’ applications such as the MS ‘Visual’ tools and other development environments are too much – heavy and complicated.  As I am usually working on a single file containing HTML, JAVA or PHP code, Notepad was a sufficient solution due to its lightweight and very simple interface – just type!  However, longing for the days when I programmed with Emacs on a Unix system – led me to do a little research to find a similar tool that could highlight syntax and make the coding more human readable with, you know, colors and indentations and stuff.  This is when I discovered Notepad++

http://notepad-plus-plus.org

This program is lightweight, and supports all the programming languages I care about.  Check out the site above – there is even a little how to which lets you replace your current Notepad application completely!  Once you use it for a bit, you will probably come back and set it up permanently.  Enjoy!