Null Pad

Text editors are not just means of writing some ideas or temporary strings. On the contrary, some text editors are also the first step in development projects, being fitted with syntax highlighters and support for programming files. As such, Null Pad wants to be by your side all the way while you develop your programs.

One of the first things you notice is that it’s not packed inside an installer, so you can see what it can do for you from the moment download is done. More than that, you can have it deployed on a thumb drive if you’re thinking to use it on other computers. Just make sure that the target PC is fitted with .NET Framework.

A pretty compact window shows up on launch, but you can resize it so it perfectly fits in any spot, or allows you to clearly view all text. By default, you can’t start writing right away, because you first need to create a new project. On the bright side of things, multiple projects can be kept active at a time, each in its own tab.

Although the open dialog isn’t fitted with indication on what files it supports, it does allow you to work on quite the variety of programming files, such as CV.Net, C++, Jet SQL, MSSQL, PHP, SQL, Python, Ruby, XML, Batch, Lua, Perl, Pascal, and Yaml. Moreover, there is also support in terms of syntax highlighting for these types of programming files.

Saving needs to be done by also writing the extension for it to be useful later on. In terms of flexibility and comfort, you only benefit from line numbering on the side, without any indications as to how many words or characters your project contains.

All things considered, we can state that Null Pad is not the professional choice when it comes to writing source code for your projects, but it can be a proper start. Syntax highlighting is included for various languages, while tab support allows you to work on more projects at a time.