Not only is Notepad++ free under the GPL licence but it is also possible to extend its functionality with plugins. Today I’ll be taking a look at the Notepad++ plugins repository which contains a few extra bells and whistles to take your text editor to the next level.

Notepad++ & Plugins

Notepad++ has already seen a few mentions here at MakeUseOf and has earned its place on our Best Of Windows Software list. We’ve also previously included it in our Windows text editor roundup, used it to find and replace words in multiple files and shown you how to switch out your default HTML source editor in favour of Notepad++. If you’ve not yet got it, head on over to the project homepage and download for free.

Luckily there is a healthy collection of third-party plugins, some of which have made their way into the latest Notepad++ release after proving their worth. The program has its very own plugin manager (which is ironically a plugin itself) from which to janitor your add-ons and updates.

Choosing the right plugins depends entirely on what you use Notepad++ for, and there are a good number to trawl through. Installing plugins used to involve downloading archives and extracting to the ‘plugins’ directory, and while you can still do this it’s much easier to choose Plugins from the main taskbar then Plugin Manager to bring up the repository.

Once the list has refreshed you will be presented with an array of available downloads. For a better idea of what each plugin does simply click and read the description. Installing the add-ons is easy – check the box next to the plugin and click Install. Multiple plugins can be installed this way which is great because Notepad++ requires a restart before they show up.

If you do want to use the traditional download-and-extract method you’ll need to find the plugins first. Luckily there are a good number located at the npp-plugins SourceForge project page.

Recommended Plugins

Once again there’s no one-size-fits-all here, and each of you will find your own preferred plugins based on primary usage. Saying that, the following plugins do have somewhat of a broad appeal:

Explorer – A simple file explorer that sits on the left-hand side of your screen. Double click and files will open, just like that.

Compare – A surprisingly useful plugin for comparing two files, side-by-side.

AutoSave - Always forgetting to save on time? Let AutoSave save for you! Can be configured to use a timer or when Notepad++ loses focus/is minimized.

Location Navigate – Quickly jump backwards and forwards to parts of the document that you have modified, rather than trawling through all the stuff in between.

Lorem Ipsum – One for the web designers, a simple Lorem Ipsum script for instant Latin copy text.

MultiClipboard – Provides access to the last 10 copied items. Ctrl+V pastes the last copied text whereas Ctrl+Shift+V lets you choose from a list of 10 memorised copies.

XBrackets Lite – Forgetting just one bracket can ruin your whole afternoon – never again with XBrackets Lite!

Falling Bricks – Who said plugins have to be useful? Here’s a very simple Tetris clone to distract you when the time is right.

Using The Plugins

Once you’ve selected the plugins you’ll want, hit Install and let them download. You will be notified that a restart is required, agree and Notepad++ will appear once again with your bounty of add-ons enabled.

To use the plugins, visit the Plugins menu in the main taskbar and select from there. Some will have multiple functions and options and others will be very basic “enable or disable” affairs. To remove plugins (or check for updates) launch the Plugin Manager again, choose the Installed tab, select a plugin and click Remove.

Conclusion

Hopefully you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for in this excellent plugins respository. It’s a fantastic way of turbo-charging Notepad++ to be even more useful, and the right add-ons can really help tailor the application to your needs.

If you have any personal favourites, plugins you can’t live without or if you prefer a different text editor entirely then let us know in the comments below this article.

Below are three fun, simple ways in which you can try Ruby in your browser, right now, for free, without installing a single file.

Rubymonk

Hailing all the way from India, Rubymonk offers a series of over 50 short, interactive Ruby exercises and it saves your progress. Above is what I saw when I went back to Rubymonk after leaving the website (I solved the first couple of exercises).

Let’s look at what a single exercise looks like:

The exercise starts with a simple explanation, followed by a snippet of code. If you hit the Run button, the code is immediately evaluated and you get to see its output. Next, you get a simple assignment. Write the code you think is the right answer, and hit Ctrl+Enter to run it (or click the Run button). The Rubymonk now spits out an answer:

Once you finish working through some of the exercises, you will be presented with a problem to solve on your own:

You get an explanation of what you need to solve, some template code to get you started, and you’re on your own. This is great, because it’s much closer to actually coding than filling in one-liners in response to narrow questions.  If you get stuck, you can always click “See the Solution” and the solution will instantly appear in the text box.

Once you’re done with the first problem, you are transported to the table of contents, where you can pick and choose what you want to learn (and whether you want a lesson or a problem). Lessons look like this:

And a problem looks like this:

The tags are lessons which you should work through, in order to acquire the skills you need to solve the problem. The whole thing is very polished, and just generally fun to work with. Highly recommended.

Ruby Koans

The Ruby Koans are hosted over at Heroku, and are even more steeped in mysticism that Rubymonk. Check it out:

Say what you will, but this is definitely not boring. Fill in what you think is the right answer (trivial, in this case), and hit Enter. The snippet will be evaluated, and colored accordingly:

The Ruby Koans are a lot of fun, and they seem much more advanced than Rubymonk. They start off with asserts and testing, rather than arrays or other basic concepts. One small niggle is that your progress is not saved between koans, so you’d better bookmark where you stopped for the day. It’s not as AJAXy as Rubymonk, but I think it’s still great, and it’s a project that inspired many imitations, such as the JavaScript Koans.

Try Ruby

Try Ruby was created as a tribute to why’s (poignant) guide to ruby (link to PDF), one of the craziest programming textbooks I have ever laid eyes on. It’s a great book for the Ruby language, and although the author no longer takes an active role in the Ruby community, I have a feeling he would have approved of the project. The website is built as a large ruby prompt, with instructions on the side:

The text is simple and playful (no mystical references here). You type real Ruby code in the prompt, and work through the simple exercises one by one. The whole thing doesn’t take very long.

Final Thoughts

Personally, I feel that learning by doing is one of the best ways to absorb new material. These may not make you into a code ninja, but they will definitely give you a feel for Ruby. If you’re curious about the language, pick the one you like best and take it for a spin! Let us know how it went in the comments.

The reason I like VB script so much is because it’s a scaled down version of Visual Basic itself, which in my opinion is probably one of the easiest programming languages to learn if you’re just getting started as a programmer. That isn’t because the language is limited in features or scaled down in functionality, it’s because using the language is intuitive, and full of objects and components that you can pull in to perform some pretty amazing tasks with your computer.

A VB Scripting Environment

If you want to become a power Windows scripting expert, then you really need an environment that helps you remember the syntax of the language, and provides you with a quick library of functions and objects that are available to you.

VbsEdit Helps You Write Powerful Windows Scripts

If you are writing in VB6 or .Net, then you need to use the Microsoft Studio package that includes the programming environment you need. However, if you’re just a system administrator or a network IT guy, you really don’t want to spend money on an expensive tool just for writing Windows scripts. That’s where VbsEdit comes in handy.

Last week I wrote about the BlueFish editor for web apps. Well, VbsEdit is sort of the all-star tool that is very well-known within the IT community for power-scripting highly functional VB based Windows Scripts. As you can see in the screenshot above, using an editor built specifically for VB scripting gives you the power of color-coded, intelligent sensing of declarations, variables, functions and objects. It gives you pop-up lists for suggested methods, properties and events for different objects, and a whole lot more.

If you don’t know what the heck I’m talking about here, don’t worry. After using VbsEdit for a while, you’ll quickly learn how the language works and how much functionality you can add to your Windows Scripts if you write them in this language and use VbsEdit.

The one drawback of the free version of VbsEdit is that it does have a nag-screen when you first launch the application.

It is a functional, free version of the software, but you have to click “Evaluate” every time you start. If you really like it, I would suggest buying a copy, as it is really inexpensive. Otherwise, just click Evaluate and the software will launch.

VbsEdit Features

There’s a lot available when you use this tool to write Windows Script, but the first thing that I recommend you do when you first launch it is to click on the “WScript” button at the top of the main window. This enables all of the VBS features that I’m going to describe here.

The first thing that I want to point out is that when you start defining available objects, like the windows scripting object or IHost for networking, those objects appear in the Object Browser on the right side of the window.

When you drop down the Object Browser, you can see all of the elements that are available to you, and you can drill down within those to see what properties or methods are available. If you’re just learning VB scripting, this is an invaluable resource.

Another nice feature is the drop-down lookup, just like you might be accustomed to if you’ve written programs in MS Visual Studio.

Other really nice features of this tool include adding or removing breakpoints. You can do this by clicking to the left of the line where you want to pause the program, or click on the break point icon in the toolbar.

Another nice feature that makes this software just as good as MS Visual Studio is the commenting feature. You can comment entire blocks of text simply by highlighting all of it and clicking on the “comment” icon.

There is also a really nice debugging feature that most programming editors lack. When you click the run button, the program will stop at your breakpoints and you can step through your program by clicking on the various step icons.

At the bottom of the window, you can view active variables and their values while your script is running. When you’re debugging an especially complex windows script, this feature is worth its weight in gold.

The only second drawback to the free version is another nuisance screen that counts down in seconds any time you want to run your script from inside the editor.

Other really nice features of this VB Script editor include (from left to right) the ability to convert your script into an executable, a button to add your newly written code into your own personal “code library”, a useful search button, and finally a series of bookmarking buttons that let you more easily organize and navigate your script.

For the most part, VbsEdit is a much better improvement over using just a text editor for writing Windows Scripts. With VbsEdit, you can quickly see what you want to do, and how to do it. You can test your scripts and get them into production much faster than otherwise possible.

So give VbsEdit a shot and see if it improves your script writing experience. Share your thoughts about it in the comments section below.

Sure, websites are now powered by blog platforms like WordPress, or WYSIWYG editors like Kompozer, but the bottom line is that most hard core web designers will always find it necessary to pop open a text editor to tweak the style a little bit here, or to realign the template a bit more there.

I think that text editors are going to be around in the world of web design for a very long time, at least for those web programmers that are always neck-deep into improving and optimizing professional websites. So, it stands to reason that text editing tools would evolve that are more powerful and smarter; Tools created specifically for the needs of those hard-core web designers and web programmers.

Bluefish – The Text Editor for Programmers

For years, I was very adamant about sticking with Notepad, no matter what everyone else started using. In my opinion, WYSIWYG editors just padding way too much garbage into the code (particularly MS Word’s silly save-as-HTML feature).

I was very tempted to try Notepad++ when I first heard about it. Then, after reading Simon’s article on Sublime Text, I was tempted yet again. I’ve always been hesitant to jump on any bandwagon until a good, solid winner takes root.

This year, I have to confess that I’ve finally found a code editor that I can’t resist – it’s called Bluefish.

When you first setup Bluefish, you’ll see the first reason I like it so much – it is designed to handle a huge assortment of programming languages, from straight HTML and PHP to Java, VB and even ASP. The kind of flexibility is a nice thing to have in a code editor, especially if you often have your hands into many different programming languages.

And Bluefish does programming well. But before we get to that, I wanted to just show you how cool this program looks. Up to this point I haven’t found a coder’s editor with this kind of aesthetic coolness on the front end – with the most important, easy-to-find tools and tabs right at your fingertips on the main screen, depending what code you’re focused on at the moment.

As you can see, file navigation is right there on the left – no need to flip back and forth between Windows Explorer and your editor. Do all of your file exploring from right within the application itself.

That includes all of the usual things you can do with a file explorer, like moving or renaming folders and files.

When you launch a new document from the file menu, if you choose template you’ll see that Bluefish has a few pre-built program templates available. This is especially useful if you write a lot of web pages, for example, and don’t want to recreate the same generic XHTML or PHP structure. Instead, just launch Bluefish’s template and you can immediately get into creating the content.

The pic below is the standard HTML template with the header, title and body tags pre-built for you. As you can see, lines are numbered, and while you’re typing the application has a feature where it will auto-complete tags for you.

As you can see in the menu bar, there are also pre-built code snippets available under each program language. For example, HTML has standard code for web forms, and PHP has standard code snippets for how to connect to an ODBC or MySQL database.

This can save a lot of time if you’re the kind of person (like me) that often forgets the exact syntax to do some of the most basic things. To complete the code snippet for you, the program will ask you for the details. In the case of making database connections, it’ll ask you for the data source and the login details. Then it’ll basically write the code for you.

The same is true for a whole list of HTML tasks – making this app a web designers dream. You can code the same web page in half the time using Bluefish. Just tap the element that you want, provide the dialog box with a few details, and the code gets typed up and inserted for you.

It isn’t WYSIWYG, but in my opinion it’s ten times better. You know what you want to do in the code, you just don’t have time to keep checking your reference book for the right syntax – so Bluefish lets you cut the headache.

More programming aids are available from the top menu as well. If you have an HTML file open, click the “Tags” menu and you’ll see dozens of quick code functions available to choose from. Create a web form with a fraction of the effort.

As though the programming aids and tools weren’t enough, don’t forget to check out the “Tools” menu where you’ll find the ability to organize your code by joining/splitting lines, indenting, or using a filter to strip all empty lines from your code.

At the bottom of the main window, you’ll also find an output variable area for coding in languages like PHP or C++, useful to see whether your code is really doing what you want it to do.

I think it’s safe to say that Bluefish has won over my heart when it comes to “intelligent coding” rather than just hacking away in Notepad. So, give Bluefish a try and let us know whether it simplified your programming experience at all. what do you like about it? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Almost a year ago now, I wrote an introduction to Windows Scripting which showed how much more powerful a .wsf script can be than the older style batch jobs that IT professionals have been scripting and running for years. WSF gives you the power of a structured language like Visual Basic. By default, you can create a VBScript or JScript WSF file on Windows and it will run just fine.

Beyond that introductory article, today I wanted to offer three typical tools that people often use in both a professional IT environment as well as at home. Those three tools include reading input from a text file, pinging various devices on your network, and sending email via script.

The Power Of Windows Scripting

What learning each of these smaller components will do is allow you to combine them into a larger, automated script. I’m going to step through small script samples that you can put together into a very cool automated script. What that script will do is take an input IP list from a text file, ping each of those devices, and then send an alert email if any of those devices are down.

Reading Input Files

The first step in this process is learning how to read and process information from an input text file. In this case, I’ve created a text file called IPlist.ini that resides in the same directory as the script. This file contains a list of all of the IP addresses I want to check. You can read in each line of a text file using the following script.

<job>
<script language="VBScript">
Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next

Dim strHost
Dim strCommand
Dim ReturnCode
Dim strLine
Dim oFSO, sFile, oFile, sText

Set Shell = wscript.createObject("wscript.shell")
Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
sFile = "c:\users\owner\scripts\IPlist.ini"
If oFSO.FileExists(sFile) Then
Set oFile = oFSO.OpenTextFile(sFile, 1)
Do While Not oFile.AtEndOfStream
sText = oFile.ReadLine
If Trim(sText) <> "" Then
strCommand = sText
wscript.echo "IP Address is: " & sText
End If
Loop
oFile.Close

Else
WScript.Echo "The file was not there."
End If
WScript.Quit
</script>
</job>

What this code does is use the Windows file system object to open a file, and then reads one line of text at a time until it reaches the end of the file.

Pinging A Host

Now that you know how to read each IP address out of the text file, how do you go about performing a Ping withing Windows Scripting?

Pinging is a bit more complicated than reading in a text file, because you have to make use of Windows Management Instrumentation scripting (WMI). Here’s what it looks like.

<job>
<script language="VBScript">
Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next

Dim colPingResults, objPingResult, strQuery
Dim strIPtext
strIPtext = "192.168.1.105"

' WMI query
strQuery = "SELECT * FROM Win32_PingStatus WHERE Address = '" & strIPtext & "'"

Set colPingResults = GetObject("winmgmts://./root/cimv2").ExecQuery( strQuery )

' Translate query results

For Each objPingResult In colPingResults
If Not IsObject( objPingResult ) Then
Ping = False
wscript.echo strIPtext & " is not pingable"
ElseIf objPingResult.StatusCode = 0 Then
Ping = True
wscript.echo strIPtext & " is pingable"
Else
Ping = False
wscript.echo strIPtext & " is not pingable"
End If
Next
Set colPingResults = Nothing
WScript.Quit
</script>
</job>

See how easy that was? When I run it, it provides a pop-up for whether the IP was pingable or not.

In this script, I’ve only pinged a single IP address, but all you have to do is embed that ping into the previous script after each IP address is read in from the text file, and you can ping each IP address in your list.

Sending An Email

Finally, while it’s nice to have a script that you can run that will check IP addresses and pop-up a window if there are any errors, wouldn’t it be nice to run the script daily, or multiple times a day and have it automatically email with problems?

To do that, you need to know how to send an email within script. If you research online, you’ll discover dozens (or more) ways people accomplish this. By far, the most popular is using the CDO approach.

<job>
<script language="VBScript">
Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next

Const fromEmail = "rdxxxx@gmail.com"
Const password = "xxxxxxxx"

Dim emailObj, emailConfig
Set emailObj = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
emailObj.From = alert@topsecretwriters.com
emailObj.To = "rdxxxxx@gmail.com"
emailObj.Subject = "Test Email"
emailObj.TextBody = "It Works!!"

Set emailConfig = emailObj.Configuration
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserver") = "smtp.gmail.com"
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpserverport") = 465
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusing") = 2
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpauthenticate") = 1
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/smtpusessl") = true
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendusername") = fromEmail
emailConfig.Fields("http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/sendpassword") = password
emailConfig.Fields.Update
emailObj.Send
Set emailobj = nothing
Set emailConfig = nothing
WScript.Quit

</script>
</job>

The above script will let you send any text for the message body as an email to any address using your Gmail credentials. You could modify the parameters to use any other SMTP mail server you like.

Now all you have to do is put those three pieces of code together. When you do so, the script will read in each list of IP addresses, ping each one, and then send that string as the message body to a notification email. Here’s what that email will look like.

As you can imagine, this becomes pretty useful in the IT world, where you have an endless list of devices and servers to keep an eye on, and only 24 hours in the day. Any time you can have automated scripts that can check things for you, do it.

Give these Windows Scripts a try and see if it helps you optimize your work and make things more efficient. Do you know of any other cool things you can do with Windows Scripting? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Image credit: Mario Alberto Magallanes Trejo

Codecademy is a new website slash interactive programming tutorial that walks you through the basics of JavaScript. While it hasn’t been around very long, the site has already been generating a lot of buzz on the interwebs, racking up hundreds of users who, like me, want to find a fun, easy way to learn how to code online.

What Is Codecademy?

Codecademy was started by two gentlemen, Ryan Bubinski & Zach Sims, who realized what people like me were going through and sought out a way to remedy the situation. They describe their motivation on Codecademy’s About page. See if this describes you:

Codecademy was created when Zach got frustrated with learning how to program. For years, Ryan taught Zach the basics of HTML and CSS, but books and videos didn’t help. Ryan and Zach teamed up to create Codecademy, a better, more interactive way to learn how to program.

One of the things that really sets Codecademy apart (and makes it fun), is the gaming aspect that it has in place. As you progress through the lessons within the site, you will accumulate points and badges, which are displayed on your profile page.

Friends will be able to check out your profile to see the progress you’ve made, and we can expect to see other features – like leader boards – on the horizon.

Getting Started With Codecademy

The first thing you’ll notice when you go to sign up on Codecademy is that you are encouraged to take your first lesson right then and there. The interactive website will prompt you for simple information to teach you how to print out your name, find the length of it (in letters), and do simple math.

After you’ve made it through a few lessons, the site will prompt you to create an account, which you can do so by entering an email address and password, or by simply connecting with Facebook. Registering is the only way to save your progress, so I suggest you do it.

Once you officially get into Codecademy you can begin taking more lessons at your leisure. A sidebar on the lefthand side of the screen will instruct you to complete a task, and it will walk you through editing/creating code to execute that task. It really is easy.

Learning with Codecademy will put you on the path to building things like websites, games, apps, etc.

Conclusion

Codecademy is just getting started at this point, but I hope to see many more lessons get added in the coming weeks. According to TechCrunch, Ryan and Zach were not ready for the site to receive so much attention (I’m sure this article will help their cause) and they posted it to Hacker News looking for feedback, only to receive 1,000 signups in just a few hours.

Furthermore, it looks like Codecademy will be utilizing their user base to help develop new lessons for users, so if you have any expertise you’d like to lend to a good cause I suggest you check it out.

What do you think of Codecademy?  Will you be signing up?