PSPad is an amazingly powerful programmer's editor with a lengthy list of developer-friendly features.

A strong core editor includes all the goodies you'd expect: a tabbed interface, drag and drop editing, spell check (if you download additional libraries), case conversion, syntax highlighting, search/ replace in files and with regular expressions, block formatting and more.

But there's also plenty that might surprise you. An FTP client to edit documents directly on the server; smart HTML previews using IE or Firefox; an integrated copy of the TiDy library for reformatting HTML code; a macro recorder, and even a full Hex editor.

PSPad provides several ways to work with external programs. At a minimum, you can just run something, but it can also capture text output, parse logs and display the results for a real IDE effect.

You also get text differencing, matched brace highlighting, a code explorer, clipboard monitor, hash generator, expression evaluator, system file editor (view and edit HOSTS in a click), and more.

This all makes it easy to get lost, at least initially, but PSPad has more tools to help. A Projects system can be used to group related files together, while your open tabs and program state may be saved as a session, making it easy to continue where you left off later.

Version 5.0.0.277 (changelog):

- Code explorer for XML will expand first 2 levels only automatically. Speed up for big XML files
- Code explorer for PHP - classes are expanded automatically
- Code explorer - if left docked, page is automatically activated
- New Code explorer for KiBasic (ftKiBasic file type for user highlighter)