MetroTextual Is A Minimal, Elegant Text Editor With Syntax Highlighting
If you’re a programmer, web developer or even a casual user looking for a simple and minimal text editor that keeps the UI out of your way while writing code or plain text documents, Metrotextual is worth giving a shot. This easy-to-use text editor lets you do all your coding in an aesthetically pleasing interface that is bound to make you ditch notepad for good. While it is not exactly a very feature-rich program, that’s exactly what it boasts; lightning fast performance over number of options and no compromise on minimalism. In addition to being a basic text editor, the application can come really handy for software developers due its Scintilla-powered syntax highlighting for several programming, markup, scripting and database query languages.
The minimalistic design is what defines the app’s main interface. The word metro is probably what relates it to Windows 8 Modern UI as the app shows a strong resemblance to the desktop UI of Microsoft’s latest OS. It’s good to see more and more modern apps adapting to the new Windows interface philosophy. Getting back to the features, the main interface presents you with nothing more than the text editor pane and a couple of buttons on top, in addition to the standard minimize and close controls. There is no maximize or restore button, and you’ll have to resize the window manually by dragging its corner.
Clicking the miniscule Settings buttons at the top-left presents the ‘syntax highlighting’ pane with a small back arrow at the top. This feature allows software programmers or web developers to choose syntax highlighting according to the language they want for the current document. The list of supported languages includes JavaScript, Assembly, C#, Python, Postgre SQL, MSSQL, VBScript, XML, CSS and HTML.
The Menu button at the top right lets you create new text files, open existing ones, save the currently loaded file, and access MetroTrxtual’s configuration settings. There aren’t many options to tweak though; apart from changing the font size and text formatting, you can change windows color (which changes the thin border along the top and left edges of the application), window location (Windows Default or Always on top), language (only English is available at the time of this writing), and file encoding (Default, Unicode, UTF-8, ASCII). Furthermore, you can toggle the automatic update checker at the bottom if you want the app to keep itself up-to-date.
In a nutshell, MetroTextual is a great Notepad replacement for the minimalists among us and its syntax highlighting features make it an ideal choice for programmers and developers who want a basic text editor with a distraction-free UI that doesn’t get in their way while they write code. Unlike what the name suggests, the app works on Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well, in addition to Windows 8.
Nothing touches Sublime Text 2.
Nice! I’m liking this.
It’s got great add-ons for spell checking, coding, etc.
what’s your take on this compared to Notepad++ ?
Requires .NET4
It doesn’t support Windows XP.
Thank you for pointing that out; fixed.