TotalEdit v5 Code Editor Review

I reviewed TotalEdit earlier in the year, but didn’t note the version number. Needless to say, it was a much earlier version – version 5 has literally just been released (after some beta testing, which I got involved with). One thing that’s changed since that earlier review is my preference for editors that I can put on a USB key. Well, thankfully, TotalEdit has a portable version.

Unzipped it comes in at a shade over 11 MB, but this includes 4.5 MB for the spellchecker. In comparison, NotePad++ is a mere 4.5 MB, including a number of plugins that are included, but this doesn’t include a spell checker.

In use, it now has everything I need. It runs swiftly from my USB drive, I can get the display just how I like it, it remembers my previous file usage and, more importantly, the directory structure at the side remembers where I last was too – meaning I can return to exactly where I was everytime. You can even turn off the annoying “long line marker” off easily from the menus (most editors have one, but many have no way of turning them off, other than specifying a column that’s way off the screen).

Like many other editors, it’s been designed for any kind of coding and not just web development (although there is an HTML menu which has tidying options, as well an internal preview feature). Therefore there are no options to launch the current file in an external browser – however, you can create your own tool options. There are two things that now let it down – first of all, it’s not obvious how to do this without turning to the Help (for example, clicking in a blank area to add a new tool, rather than pressing an “add” button, for example). This extends to the shortcuts you can specify as parameters – even the Help isn’t very helpful, and a few examples wouldn’t have gone a miss. Secondly, and only minor, but you don’t get icons for any new tools that you add (picking up the icon from the .exe you specify, I wouldn’t have thought, wouldn’t be too difficult). Having said that, there appear to be a bug where sometimes the existing tools icons don’t appear, so at least it then appears consistent

To launch the current page, say, in Firefox is

Command: firefox
Arguments: "$FilePath"
Output Capture: Dos Prompt / Run Externally

$FilePath is the entire path to the current document, including filename. $FileName, though, is just the filename. I was expecting $FilePath to be just that – the path of folders, hence my confusion. This is where I say some examples would help clear things up a little. Also note the quotes which are required.

Configuration wise, the whole editor is highly changeable (thankfully, in the portable version of the program it’s obvious which files contain configuration data, and therefore shouldn’t be over-written). However, you can’t assign keyboard shortcuts to the tools you create yourself. But otherwise, excellent.

There is a project facility, but this isn’t an option I use (I prefer to use folder structures on my drive as projects) – never-the-less it’s very welcome to have. The same goes for macros – again something I don’t use but it’s welcome to have.

So, what do I think of it overall? Well, I said in my earlier review that it might usurp NotePad++ as my editor of choice if it remembered the folder structures. It now does. So it has.

One quick tip… I’ve changed the code font to Consolas, a TrueType monospace font which, if you’ve not got it already, can be downloaded from Microsoft for free.

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