Sometimes, the simplest of programs turn out to be the best ones. If you’re anything like me, time often comes when you don’t want to have to wait for the few seconds that it’ll take for Photoshop to load up. If it’s a simple resize or edit, I’ll just use Paint. If I need to jot down a note, sometimes it’s not worth the extra wait to bring up Evernote. I’ll just toss it in a Notepad file. Advantages are obvious with these small applications when you’re an impatient person like me.

Aside from being preferably based on brisk loading times, some applications just don’t require too many resource-intensive features. Minimalist applications are tiny and clean, and as long as they get the job done then you won’t find me complaining. Text editors can be a great example of this type of software, and in this post I’d like to show you two of my favorite.

Caderno

Caderno is pretty simple. Basically, it’s a juiced up Notepad.

New features include the following:

• Tabs
• Session management and crash recovery
• Syntax highlighting for CSS, HTML, and more
• Line/column indication
• Portability

While these aren’t features that aren’t anything that haven’t been seen before, they manage to compact everything into a small package that keeps the look and feel of the original Notepad.

The screenshot above shows syntax highlighting with HTML. The features of Caderno aren’t hard to figure out on your own, and I can’t think of a reason why someone would want to use Notepad if this is available to you. It’s Notepad but better, without being obnoxious.

Caderno is available in an installation, portable, and U3 version.

Plain View

Plain View is more of a text viewer than a text editor. Though you’re able to edit text files with Plain View, the functionality really caters to being able to zip through text files all at once and see the content within each.

Upon running Plain View, click the icon (the only one that exists, really) and select a folder that has the text files that you’re attempting to check through. Highlight that folder name and hit Enter, and you’ll be taken to a screen that displays all of the text files in that folder.

The editing features are pretty lackluster, as all you’re able to do is really click and edit in completely plain text. But, if you have a folder full of text files and you’re looking for something important in one of those files, this is absolutely the way to do.

Plain View works on all versions of Windows, past and including Windows XP.

This program works with any number of text files (to my knowledge), but remember that if you’re opening a folder with 1000 text files then you should expect the program’s performance to suffer a pretty good hit.

In such small packages, these two applications are able to provide what the originals should have for us. Let me know what you guys think of these applications in the comments!