Since Microsoft does not seem interested in either adding new features to their ages old Notepad editor or in taking the development any further (rumor is that they will put Notepad in Microsoft Store in future to be manually downloaded and installed by the users), users are coming up with alternatives to Notepad and its replacements. Notepad++ is a very popular candidate in this regard, but Notepad2 looks more likely the rightful successor of aging Windows Notepad. In fact, its first version was released a long time before even when Notepad++ existed.
Notepad2 is a portable text editor designed for Windows – both the 64-bit and 32-bit systems. It provides syntax highlighting for several programming and web languages including – HTML, XML, PHP, ASP (JS, VBS), CSS, JavaScript, VBScript, C/C++, C#, Resource Script, Makefiles, Java, Visual Basic, Pascal, Assembly, SQL, Perl, Python, Configuration Files, Apache Config Files, PowerShell, Batch Files and more.
Notepad2 download is just 324KB and it packs all these features in a single EXE making it an ideal portable text editor. There are no hard to understand or difficult to find options buried inside this program. All the options are accessible from the menubar itself. You can click on Settings in the menubar and it will show all the possible options available in a long menu which include various settings about the syntax highlighting, program’s visual settings, and the saving of the files.
Notepad2 is also highly customizable and you can change its complete appearance just by making changes to the notepad2.ini file that is located in the same folder as the notepad2.exe program. In fact, some of the fans have uploaded their visual style settings on the internet and you can simply download and merge them with your notepad2.ini file. For this, you have to press the Ctrl+F12 hotkey and then click on Import to select the new settings file.
Notepad is a small, fast, portable and lightweight Windows Notepad replacement. It works all the Windows versions released after Windows 2000. Unfortunately there seems to be no new development for Notepad2 in the near future, but it can still compete with all the text editors when it comes to features and being light on the system resources.
You can download Notepad2 from http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html.