Click here to download the new version.

Cloud storage integration

With cloud integration, you can get rid of productivity-crippling interruptions and search for files directly inside a window dialog in the editor. 

This is particularly helpful if you have multiple cloud accounts or if you haven’t mounted all your cloud profiles in your desktop. With this new feature, you can use the UltraEdit dialog as a hub to search all your files from any supported cloud service.

The following cloud storage services are available:

• Google Drive
• Microsoft OneDrive
• Amazon S3
• Dropbox

Application scripting additions

• New document properties

These set of new scripting parameters help you determine certain document properties for use in scripts. This includes certain properties such as when the document was created or modified or accessed, you want to know what the attributes of that document are.

Here is the list of new properties added in UE 2024.0:

• dateCreated
• dateModified
• dateAccessed
• fileAttributes
• owner
• syntaxHighlighting
• characters
• lines
• nonEmptyLines
• sLOC
• averageLineLength
• longestLine
• changedLines

• readText/writeText functions & getEnvironmentVariable function

There are also added improvements for properties and elements beyond the domain of the editor. This is for when you want to check for certain properties or parameters that are outside the opened file, you can use the following functions.

For example, you may want to know who owns the file, or what type of syntax highlighting is used. With these new functions you can adjust your scripting to discriminate various traits.

Scripting documentation.

LEARN MORE: For a complete list of existing functions and scripting you can visit Help in the editor. Alternatively, you can read this online documentation conveniently located in a Google doc. 🙂

Access the help menu in top right of application window, next to Support menu.

Updated standards for dockable window for SSH/Telnet 

For SSH/Telnet users and systems administrators, great news! UE 2024.0 brings more modern encryption and connection standards.

This comes at the heel of multiple user requests asking for bug fixes and QoL improvements. Alongside the fixes, the console has been updated to be on par with the latest industry standards and conventions for encryption and connection. The following have been added:

• Support for key agents
• Latest encryption standards

UltraEdit’s SSH console will now use SSH key agents, if present, when logging in to SSH hosts. A key agent centralizes and simplifies public/private key management by loading keys and prompting for required passphrases. Once loaded the keys can be used by any application that supports the key agent protocol.

It now leverages industry standard OpenSSH tools, included with Microsoft Windows, to support the latest encryption standards while also ensuring timely security and protocol updates.

Support has also been added for user specified custom settings and parameters providing access to the full set of OpenSSH configuration options, including SSH forwarding.

What’s Next for UltraEdit?

Historically, the first UltraEdit update of the year is a more condensed package that gives the foresight of where the updates will go for the rest of the year. (e.g. previous years had a theme around augmenting large file handling or the scripting SDK setup)

This release will mark a departure from that concept. UE’s product development will utilize smaller bundled but more frequent updates. This allows more flexibility and more timely improvements to be delivered—not necessarily at the expense of the overall work done in the editor year over year.

What does this mean to you? Well, for one thing, the development team will be more receptive to your feature requests and you can expect shorter wait times for simpler requests to make their way into the next release.

You’ve reached the end of UE 2024.0 updates. But we’re expecting the fruition of some of our foundational changes from last year to come incrementally—some are in the editor already!

Fixes and improvements

Apart from new features, this release has a lot of maintenance and improvement items. Here is a list of fixes and quality-of-life improvements based upon user reports and requests. If you have any questions or suggestions, please mail them to support@ultraedit.com.

• Honor Windows setting to hide cursor (mouse pointer) while typing
• Allow sorting by clicking on the column headers in the Windows dialog
• Add “Copy” button to Sum Selection dialog for total value
• Sum selection returns incorrect negative value
• Add link to main downloads page in Support menu
• Add ability to run PowerShell script from context menu in Project or File View
• Add “New script” as default PowerShell template
• Default language for syntax highlighting is changed if new wordfiles are added
• Second instead of first configuration item selected on using Find in Configuration
• Display issues with Manage Themes dialog on Windows 11 at 175% scaling and UHD resolutions
• Clipped labels in Modify Templates/Modify Groups dialogs at 125% scaling
• File extension based font setting is ignored
• URL selection is incorrect in Markdown file
• Default Template fails to appear, after closing and reopening the file
• Renaming a file is not reflected in file lists
• Creating a new template with the same existing template name
• “New script” default template does not appear for all applicable template groups
• UI elements not clearly visible after resizing Modify Templates dialog

Download UE 2024.0

The post UltraEdit 2024.0 release post appeared first on UltraEdit.

Almost exactly 30 years ago, UltraEdit’s original author Ian Mead introduced his new Windows text editor – at that time, a side project named MEDIT – to an online CompuServe software library with little more than faith and hope for its future. (You can still read his original inspiring story here). 

In the burgeoning software industry of the 90s, UltraEdit found quick adoption with both individuals and larger companies for its reputation as a performant, versatile, and trustworthy text editor – something that still holds true today. For many users, UltraEdit’s ability to open large files of any size thanks to its novel disk-based approach to editing was (and still is) compelling enough to make UltraEdit the editor of choice for engineers, teams, and even entire corporations.

Initially introduced as a 16-bit application for Windows 3.1, UltraEdit kept lockstep with technology with the release of a 32-bit counterpart for Windows NT/95 and adopting a “-32” suffix to distinguish the two versions. Several years later, a 64-bit version would follow and is now the standard version in use.

As UltraEdit continued to grow in popularity, Ian recognized the need to build a team and organization that could service the many aspects of the growing product. This entailed many hires for various roles across engineering, QA, customer support, and marketing, as well as a partner and vice president, Richard Knott, to help steer the vision for UltraEdit. Believe it or not, UltraEdit’s first hire, Troy Pennington, is still with us today as QA and Support Manager!

These three decades have seen some major milestones: we released UEStudio, a version of UltraEdit with additional developer power tools. We brought UltraEdit’s sister product UltraCompare to market, as well as several other products including UltraSentry (now EOL’d), UltraFinder, and UltraFTP. We stepped into the Mac and Linux space with multi-platform offerings of UltraEdit and UltraCompare. We celebrated our one millionth user…now, many times that. We heard from customers about how our products were being used in NASA’s Mars rover program, genetic sequencing in the human genome project, and many other fascinating scientific and technical projects.

Throughout the journey, we’ve steadfastly centered on our “north star” instilled by our founder years ago: always do what’s right for the customer. And while interpretations of “right” may have varied, what hasn’t changed is our commitment to actively listen and promptly respond to your valuable feedback in service of that core value.

That brings me to the very best part of this 30-year celebration: you. I am extremely grateful for our loyal customers who have helped us become what we are today. Many of our biggest product advancements and breakthroughs are thanks to you: your posts, your emails, your suggestions, and your willingness to work directly with us in understanding your unique needs and challenges. We embrace that spirit of cooperation and collaboration. It fuels us every day. For our part, there’s nothing more satisfying than hearing from a delighted user who’s solved a unique challenge with our “Swiss Army Knife” text editor. 

So while there have been many transformative changes over these years, including a transition to new ownership, our mission and vision remain unchanged. Our team is still largely intact…and growing! Our core values established by our founder 30 years ago still guide us. We’re excited about what the future holds for our products and our customers (stay tuned!). We will continue talking to you about the problems you’re facing in your daily work and what we can do to help you solve them. And we will continue doing what’s right for you, because if we’ve learned anything through this journey, it’s that if we take care of our users first everything else will follow. Thirty years of text editing excellence and success have proven it.

We hope you enjoy the 30th major release of UltraEdit in v2024.0. And thank you again for an amazing three decades. Here’s to three more! 🥂

The post 30 Years of UltraEdit appeared first on UltraEdit.

Hexadecimal notation, commonly referred to as hex, serves as a cornerstone of modern technology. It is a numbering system with a base of 16 that uses 16 symbols to represent values from 0 to 15. It includes the standard symbols 0-9 and the letters A-F (or a-f) to represent values from ten to fifteen. Its presence is evident in various industry systems, including binary file formats, memory, and network addresses.

Moreover, hex plays a crucial role in encoding ASCII characters, streamlining the transmission of text data. Hex editors serve as essential utilities, empowering users to navigate and modify binary data efficiently. 

In a nutshell, hex editors are indispensable for navigating the digital landscape, enabling precise control and manipulation of data formats.

What are Hex Editors?

Hex editors are extensively utilized by programmers, security professionals, system administrators, and other tech-related professionals to view and edit binary data written in a hexadecimal format. 

Although similar to text editors that edit plain text data, hex editors are tailored for working with binary data. This allows developers and users to edit individual bytes of data present in a file. 

Additionally, there are files that cannot be edited in a text editor. If you’ve ever tried opening a file without the corresponding program that can read it (e.g. a random .dat file), your system may automatically default to using a simple text reader to try and open it. This opens a garbage file that is illegible and unusable—unless you use a hex editor.

Why are Hex Editors Necessary?

Hex editors provide users  access to the raw bytes that make up a file. Most of us who use text editors see user-friendly interfaces and texts that we can understand. However, behind the scenes are strings of binary values that are represented by text humans can understand.

Peeking through these binary values can help both developers and users alike to do the following:

• Troubleshoot and fix corrupted bytes of data

Corrupted data can stem from hardware malfunctions, software bugs, code tampering, and more. Its effect can be observed as data loss, crashes, or errors— affecting the productivity and utility of a system. 

Even the bytes of plain text files aren’t invulnerable against data corruption. Fortunately, hex editors offer users the ability to accurately locate and rectify corrupted bytes to their accurate values.

Note that the hex editor itself won’t tell you which byte(s) within the file is corrupted – you’ll need to know what to look for. But the hex editor provides a clear view into the bytes of the file so that you can easily do so, along with other tools like search/replace.

• Finding and removing non-printable / out-of-range characters in plain text files

Non-printable or out-of-range characters may sometimes be in plain text files. Depending on the program or use case, they may need to be removed to ensure data integrity, functionality, and human readability. Hex editors can read non-printable characters that can interfere with operations like searching, sorting, or parsing text.

• Data recovery

Being able to correct corrupted data, hex editors also allow users to recover lost data due to corrupted bytes. As mentioned previously this is achieved through inspecting and repairing binary data.

• Easier debugging process

Through hex editors, developers can inspect the embedded strings that are in executable files to further understand their structure. If you have enough prior knowledge, you can make targeted changes, fixing errors, or applying updates to compiled executables without access to the original source code

• Data modification and exploration

Hex editors are handy tools for exploring and tweaking file formats. By checking out how files are put together in binary, users can figure out how they work and adjust as needed. 

This could mean modifying game saves, modding games, adjusting settings in config files, or fixing up software files to make them work better.

Because you are editing specific bytes, you can alter certain executables with the proper know-how. Hex editors are commonly used to reverse engineer certain programs and executables because of how intricate it can be.

Limitations of hex editors

While extremely powerful and versatile, hex editors are not complete solutions. Editing singular files may not allow you the complete access you expect. For instance:

• You can copy and modify data—but without the program to properly read the file, you cannot execute it.
• You cannot bypass dependencies and third-party verification (digital certificates). In fact, altering even just a single byte in a digitally signed binary file will “break” the digital signature and introduce security issues if executed later.
• Some applications rely on multiple files and programs to run. Editing one file does not automatically translate to a workable file.
• You need some prior knowledge of when and where the relevant data starts. (How do you know where the “row data” starts and ends?)
• It may be overwhelming editing files of significant sizes using a hex editor. You may miss fundamental editing features such as those in text editors.

Considerations when picking a hex editor

There are many hex editors in the market ranging from free open-source software to paid ones. However, there are many things that you would like to consider before committing to buying one. Here are some of them:

1. Ease of use
2. Ancillary editing tools
3. Supported platforms
4. Security
5. Support and updates
6. Credibility

Recommended Tools for Working with Binary Files

When working with hex editors, you would most likely be using data manipulation techniques and features found in text editors. That is why some developers use both text editors and binary file editors for their work.

However, it may be tedious to switch between a text and hex editor repeatedly. UltraEdit stands out as a 2-in1 text and hex editor with higher software security standards. UltraEdit combines both text and hex editors, removing the need to run two separate programs to edit textual and binary data. 

Renowned for being able to open and edit extremely large files, UltraEdit’s optimized performance allows it to effortlessly handle any project, ensuring swift editing without compromising efficiency. 

Security and privacy are also one of its strengths. It comes with many security features including data encryption support, password protection, and regular security updates—features that you appreciate if you regularly work with sensitive data and binary files. 

Compatible across multiple operating systems, UltraEdit ensures seamless integration into your workflow. It only requires one license for Windows, Mac, and Linux; allowing users to utilize the editor using up to three machines on any platform. 

Apart from being a text and hex editor, UltraEdit is a multi-purpose editor that includes a text editor, HTML editor, XML/JSON viewer, and a hex editor, empowering users to tailor the editor to their specific needs. 

With UltraEdit, you’ll experience a smooth, secure, and productive editing experience, making it the ideal choice for professionals and enthusiasts alike.

Try UltraEdit text editor with Hex mode.

The post The Value of Hex Editors: Where they’re used appeared first on UltraEdit.

During the webinar you will:

• Understand the facts of non-compliance failure
• See how security-related problems can affect your company
• Learn how to protect your data when using text-editors
• Know the different industry practices UltraEdit use to protect users

This webinar is presented by Ian Barker (Developer Advocate).

This webinar has concluded. If you missed it, you could scroll down and watch the replay, skim through the highlights, and access the presentation slide.

Webinar Slides

 Replay

00:00:00 Start

00:02:30 Introduction

Ian introduced the concept of security breaches and their consequences. He then proceeded to provide viewers with a brief explanation on how UltraEdit protects users against data breaches, making them a harder target through the eyes of bad actors. 

00:04:12 It can happen to anyone

It is a common misconception that only major companies possess the risk against security breaches; however, most attacks are conducted against small businesses.

This section also contains data that shows the frequency of security attacks against US companies alone— a figure that can increase due to unreported or undetected breaches.

00:05:22 What does it cost

Ian explains how a security risk can potentially cost a business everything. Using data from 2020 to 2021, he then proceeded to show the severity of the penalty against non-compliance failures. Aside from being sued by individuals, there also exists the risk of fines under the jurisdiction of agencies and organizations such as the GDPR.

To further explain this, Ian shows 13 more links that state the cost of cybersecurity risks such as data theft and breaches.

00:12:42 But it’s “just a text editor”

Even text editors are vulnerable against data breaches and other threats and vulnerabilities. Data figures from 2018-2022 alone suggest that there were 3.26 million total complaints and around $27.6 Billion in total losses due to vulnerabilities in text editors.

That said, users should be aware of the threat looming behind the screen, especially when using open-source editors.

00:14:18 Security threats and vulnerabilities in text editors

This part of the webinar provides viewers with the possible problems that text editors may have behind the curtains. Ian then formulates various examples of text editor vulnerabilities consumers should be aware of.

From the abuse of third-party plugins to just plain developer negligence, there are multiple ways a malicious attack can be done on a seemingly safe text editor. 

00:21:14 So how do we stop it

Identifying and stopping security attacks before they happen is a crucial skill to have in the digital age. Ian started this section by giving importance to knowing that the threat to data security is real.

To prevent data attacks, users should be aware of a lot of things to ensure their data’s safety; however, this can be easily achieved by using UltraEdit.

00:38:38 How does UltraEdit stop it

Before releasing to consumers, UltraEdit undergoes secure coding practices, testing, and review that provide users with a worry-free experience. Furthermore, to ensure integrity, UltraEdit and its third-party component are scanned by Kiuwan SAST and Black Duck SCA respectively.

Ian also states the importance of your data, that’s why UltraEdit doesn’t send user data to cloud servers. UltraEdit also supports both online and offline license activation, SBOM requests, optional server connectivity, and more for a safer and seamless user experience.

00:45:57 What do we do to secure your editor and your data

In this part, Ian explains UltraEdit’s three-pronged methodology, editor support, and employed tools that makes the editor secure. If you’re curious on how UltraEdit protects your data, watching this section will fill you in with the details.

00:55:06 Q&A

Ian brings the webinar to an end and answers some questions from the viewers regarding UltraEdit.

Have any feedback or questions from this webinar? Send us a message with subject line “UltraEdit Security Feedback” in this address.

The post UltraEdit Masterclass: Are you accidentally leaving your security wide open? [Webinar Recap] appeared first on UltraEdit.

We’ve discussed in a previous blog why a tool as unassuming as a text editor also needs to be security-hardened in this day and age. In this blog, you can read on further to find out what tools UltraEdit uses to protect you and your data and what measures it employs to ensure its source code’s integrity.

Our Latest Additions to the UE Development Pipeline

UltraEdit is proud to announce that the source code and third-party components used in its underlying architecture are secured by state-of- the-art static application security testing tools (SAST) and source code analysis (SCA) tools.

UltraEdit recognizes that many individuals and businesses expect to be able to trust our tools with their most important and, often, confidential data. These security integrations represent a significant investment in meeting and exceeding those expectations. Hardening the security of our products to this level exemplifies our unwavering commitment to the integrity and protection of our users’ data and systems.

UltraEdit is primarily secured in three ways:

Why are these tools necessary?

UltraEdit stands alone in a crowded market of IDEs and editing tools when it comes to security. Our commitment to providing tools that not only exceed expectations in terms of functionality but also in terms of safety and security is unparalleled. One of UltraEdit’s priorities and edge over the competition lies in its ability to secure your digital assets by building a robust text editor built with security in mind—not as an afterthought. 

The industry-leading third-party tools we use provide ongoing comprehensive analysis and hardening of our codebase and serve as credible verification of the security of our applications. These tools help us identify critical issues and vulnerabilities before they ever ship.

Static application security testing (SAST) via Kiuwan

Kiuwan’s Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tool provides UltraEdit developers with several benefits: detecting security vulnerabilities in source code as they are written, enforcing the team’s coding guidelines, and flagging potential bug-prone elements in the source code.

Software composition analysis (SCA) via Black Duck

Blackduck by Synopsys is a software composition analysis (SCA) tool that UltraEdit uses to detect, manage, and secure its third-party source code components. This is an essential tool especially now that UltraEdit is adding its own plugin ecosystem.

UltraEdit’s Approach to Security: A Blend of Tools and Techniques

UltraEdit follows a three-pronged approach when it comes to security. This process involves internal checks, industry standard practices, and the utilization of software security tools. Each aspect of this approach filters out more surface areas and possible points of vulnerability in the software’s source code. 

Read on further to see how UltraEdit uses the latest additions to its toolset to help improve security.

• Manual and Peer Review

The first check comes in the form of manual peer review inside our development and engineering teams. Every edit or source code commit for any of our tools is inspected by a colleague before it is checked into source. Sharing written code also promotes transparency, early error detection, and collaboration, which are all essential for efficient software maintenance. 

It’s also the most accessible form of code protection; there’s no reason for a team or a company to not have a standard protocol involving manual peer review.

Keep in mind: Manual code review does have limitations, including the possibility of missing vulnerabilities due to human error or oversight. It’s also not easily scalable—something that might be of concern if you have multiple components or you’re dealing with multi-faceted source code applications.

In essence, though, this two-step manual process detects the most obvious errors and provides an avenue to ensure consistent coding standards. It’s also one of the easiest and most inexpensive options for securing source code; however, it must be augmented with other techniques such as automated testing.

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools.

To address the limitations of manual review, software developers employ automated tools and techniques. Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools are automatic quality control tools that complement manual code review. By combining manual review with suggestions from SAST tools, the overall security of source code is improved, helping to reduce the number of flaws that may slip into production.

These tools are used to evaluate source code without running or executing it—thus the term static. They examine the program’s structure and syntax to identify potential issues and errors, such as coding mistakes, security vulnerabilities, and performance bottlenecks.

UltraEdit uses a dedicated source code analysis tool (more on this later) to scan source code for possible vulnerabilities. These help detect issues that are laborious to check manually. This filters out common software errors such as obsolete programming techniques, memory leaks, buffer overflows, race conditions – things that can cause crashes or data corruption – and the like. It can even be fine-tuned according to UltraEdit’s own coding guidelines and conventions, which ensures better and faster development.

Keep in mind: While SAST tools cover a lot of ground in terms of curbing software vulnerabilities, it is not a catch-all solution. Because it lacks the ability to recognize context in the runtime environment, it may produce false positives, identifying issues that are not actual vulnerabilities, and false negatives. 

They are also often reserved for specific languages—meaning if you add components outside the supported code language, it may miss out on highlighting issues entirely. 

But overall, using automated tools greatly reduces development time as they can catch possible flaws early into a development cycle with minimal effort. They are also easy to use and are a great addition to manual peer review.

• Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools

Similar to how SAST tools augment manual review, software composition analysis (SCA) tools can also cover some of the limitations of SAST tools. SCA tools are primarily used to analyze and manage the open-source elements of applications and software source code.

UltraEdit, like most modern software, has external dependencies. UltraEdit is not open source software but it does use open source components. This is one of the more crucial steps that not every publisher will take. This type of scan cross-verifies each and every line in UE’s open source dependencies with a database of known vulnerabilities maintained by security professionals. This database is continuously updated so that security issues can be detected and mitigated as part of the standard product build pipeline.

Many SCA tools also provide an automated inventory of all open source components within a software package, including those components version numbers. This information is often published publicly via something called a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), a document that is now required by United States executive order for all federal software procurement.

Keep in mind: To properly work, SCA tools must rely on an up-to-date components database and list of known vulnerabilities. This means that obscure vendors or unpopular open source projects may sometimes take its time before it is identified properly. Developers must still exercise due diligence in choosing and maintaining the components they add to their source code.

However, SCA tools significantly reduce the time and effort required to track the provenance of libraries, plugins, and inherited components in your source code. This makes the SAST-SCA tool combo one of the most comprehensive security solutions available for software development. It vets most of the self-written code.

Threats and vulnerabilities in text editors

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center 2022 Internet Crime Report shows the trend of total cybercrime complaints they received contrasted against the amount of losses incurred.

Apart from the internal code that a team of developers writes, modern software is also built upon other pre-existing software and code. This makes it cheaper and faster to turn what would be a gargantuan development project into a more reasonable one-month sprint. However, this interdependent network of code also increases the scope of code that has to be secured and verified.

Even in a text editor—a usually unassuming piece of software—malicious actors may exploit security flaws due to the developers’ mistakes or due to inadvertent vulnerabilities embedded in the components of the source code.

• Security threats and vulnerabilities that can be present in a code or text editor include:
• Abuse of Third-Party Plugins: Security risks in popular extensible text editors that allow hackers to abuse plugins and escalate privileges on targeted systems
• Eval Injection: Improper neutralization of directives in dynamically evaluated code, which can lead to the execution of malicious code
• Broken Authentication: When authentication credentials are stolen, malicious actors can hijack user sessions and identities to impersonate the original user.
• SQL Injection: This can allow attackers to steal sensitive data, fake identities, and engage in various other malicious actions.
• Remote Takeover Vulnerabilities: Critical vulnerabilities in open source text editors that could allow attackers to remotely compromise a victim’s server and steal sensitive data
• Developer Negligence: Even without malicious actors, software may still become embedded with vulnerable components with security flaws if it gets published undetected.

Cybercrime takes on many forms: social engineering, network hacks, fraud, espionage, and a lot more. Each product or piece of software’s supply chain should theoretically be as fortified as possible. On the other hand, developer negligence and ignorance may also pose the same risks. Inadvertently using unverified source code and buggy, unreviewed code may bring as much harm as malicious actors.

The demand for extensibility has given birth to editor and IDE plugins—software components created by the open source community to solve each and every possible use case. Editor plugins and extensions provide exceptional flexibility and customizability to tailor to any user’s specific use case. (UltraEdit is adopting a modified version of this model.)

To mitigate these risks, it is important to use a combination of secure code review tools, regular testing during development, and monitoring and tracking repetitive issues. Secure code reviews can help identify and mitigate these vulnerabilities, ultimately strengthening the security of the code and text editors.

Looking forward: What to expect from UltraEdit

This blog post is meant to give you an idea about our approach to security and to share a bit about our two new security tools. There is no completely secure software available, period. But when it comes to security-hardened text editors, you can be sure that UltraEdit is one of the best (and maybe the only) choices available. Moving forward, UltraEdit will continue its endeavor to reinforce its security with the best industry practices.

Do you have specific use cases that need extra attention when it comes to security? The UltraEdit team is always looking for ways to improve the editor and its services. Send us a message detailing your use case, and we’ll make sure to consider it for the next release.

REGISTER NOW: Join our webinar on software security

The post Securing your software: How UltraEdit, a text editor, keeps your data safe appeared first on UltraEdit.

Back in the days of the nascent World Wide Web, I built my first website while in seventh grade on the then-popular website hosting platform Angelfire. I used Microsoft FrontPage to visually lay out tables and images, then uploaded via FTP the resultant HTML files it created to Angelfire’s server.

I recall discussing with a friend (whose skills far surpassed mine) how HTML tables were so important for HTML layouts and what the future might hold for web design. At some point he said to me, “Tables won’t matter soon – the new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) features are going to make them obsolete. In fact, I do most of my layout and design now by editing CSS files directly in Notepad.”

While I refrained from showing my ignorance at the time, I remember incredulously thinking, “What?! Why in the world would anyone be using Windows Notepad to edit websites? Can you actually do that?” So began my journey of learning source code and editing plain text files.

Decades later, not much has changed in how our tech works. Underneath the many layers of abstraction and multiple steps of obfuscation, the internet – and the whole of technology in general – still runs on plain text files.

While our advances in software and computing since my middle school experience have been exponential – so exponential, in fact, that some students don’t know what files and folders are – if you want to harness the power of your computer, your smartphone, the internet, or some programming language to build and create, it’s essential to comprehensively understand the important plain text base layer that undergirds all our tech. Hence this blog post. Let’s take a deep dive into what plain text is, how to edit it, and how to choose a text editor that works for you.

What is a plain text file?

Understanding the “atoms” and “molecules” of computing

In grade school, we all learned that atoms comprise everything. (Now we know about subatomic particles, but for the purposes of this analogy, we’ll stick with atoms as our basic building block.) Bond those atoms together in certain ways, and you have molecules. Molecules are the basis of the natural world – from the air we breathe, to the food we eat, to our own bodies and their complex biological systems, to the materials used to build homes and skyscrapers…and everything in between.

This is somewhat oversimplified, but you can think of computing using a similar model. At the most basic level, computers speak in binary, i.e. 0s and 1s. “On” and “off”. “Yes” or “no.” These basic units are called “bits” (short for “binary units”), and they are the atoms of the computer world. Everything a computer is used for – video games, SMS messaging, space shuttle launches – it’s all composed of bits when you break it down to the lowest level.

Like an atom, a bit by itself isn’t very useful. However, like molecules, when you start arranging multiple bits in more complex structures, they become more useful. A “byte” in computing is a grouped arrangement of 8 bits, and bytes are akin to molecules in our analogy. And yes, this is what the “byte” in megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, etc. refers to.

Like molecules, these bytes can then be arranged themselves to create more complex structures. For example, they can form the data used to display a JPG cat photo on your screen, they can be arranged to output the sound of your coworkers’ voices through your speakers, or they can be arranged in sequences that represent alphanumeric characters – what we call “plain text.”

Plain text files

So human-readable plain text files are, basically, arrangements of bytes that represent human-readable characters. The process of actually translating binary into human-readable text (from on/off bits, to bytes, then to plain text) is known as character encoding. Essentially, the computer system is pre-programmed with a “translator” that knows which byte (or sequence of bytes) represents which human readable character. That’s how the computer knows what to display on your screen when you open a text file. It’s kind of like using a decoder ring to decrypt an encoded message. For a deeper dive on this, check out our Unicode power tip.

Binary (non-plain-text) files

Now, something like a JPG file isn’t going to be human-readable because the computer’s translator for a JPG doesn’t translate bytes to plain text data. Instead, it translates bytes to pixel data which is then shown on your screen as an image. You need an image viewing program for that, which comes with its own pre-programmed translator for those types of “molecules” (bytes). 

You can open a JPG in a plain text editor, and while you’ll see letters and numbers, you’re not going to see anything that makes sense to humans. That’s because the computer is using the wrong translator for the byte data “language” in the JPG file. The same is true for Word Docs (they’re not plain text), PDFs, EXEs, DLLs, and many other data formats. We call these formats “binary”. (By the way, if you need to edit a binary file, check out UltraEdit’s hex editor!)

Opening a JPG image using a hex editor. This works because by encoding using hex notation, you can compress a longer binary string to save space.

Summary

In a nutshell, “bits” are the atoms of the computing world. When bits are arranged in groups of eight, it enables us to create different 8-bit combinations called “bytes,” which are the molecules of the computing world. These molecules can then be pieced together in meaningful ways inside of files to create all types of different “materials,” or data formats, that we can then use computers to translate to obtain information. One of those formats is plain text which can be used for creating source code files, log files, data and information storage, and a lot more.

How to edit plain text files?

Now that you have an understanding of what plain text is, you probably already know the answer to this question. You can edit plain text files with a text editor: a computer program that is designed to decode (read) and encode (write) plain text format. 

All operating systems include a plain text editor:

• Windows has Notepad
• MacOS has TextEdit
• Linux has many options…

To edit plain text files, open your OS’s text editor (or one you installed on your own) and simply open the plain text file you want to edit. It’s that simple.

iOS and Android don’t typically come prepackaged with text editors, but there are many robust third party Android text editors and iOS text editors available. iOS does include a minimal text editor for opening plain text files on your iPhone or iPad, but it leaves a lot to be desired, and you’ll quickly find yourself wanting something beyond its basic featureset.

Each type of editor comes with their own sets of benefits. For example, the native Windows Notepad may be enough for editing small plain text files but you would need a specialized editor like UltraEdit if you want to execute more complex text operations.

What is a text editor?

As defined above, a text editor is a computer application that is designed to decode and encode (or “read”) plain text format. A text editor is used to create, change, or edit plain text files.

Many people use text editors to open and modify plain text files like programming source code, config files (think JSON, XML, etc.), documentation (things like wiki markup and Markdown), log files, and much more.

Revisiting our atoms/molecules analogy, we established that plain text format is just one possible “material” that can be formed with “molecules” (bytes). A text editor is a tool that allows you to work directly with this material, allowing for a pure and straightforward connection with the digital fabric. No frills — just you and the plain text canvas. 

How does a text editor work?

Every character in a string has a corresponding value depending on the encoding format used. The graphic above uses ASCII values. Each value can then be represented as bits or bytes.

When you open a plain text file with a text editor, the editor retrieves the raw binary data (all those 0s and 1s) stored on your computer’s hard drive, then translates that into a human-readable format to display in the text editor. Here’s a bit more about how that process works:

1. You select the file to open. The editor accesses the file through your operating system and reads the binary data stored in the file.
2. The editor loads the binary data into memory and then interprets the bytes of the binary data as human-readable characters based on a specific encoding. There are many, many encodings, but only a few really popular ones that are used today (ASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16, etc.). The editor must determine which encoding is correct for the file, because if it doesn’t, your human-readable plain text will wind up looking like nonsensical garbage. There are several methods a text editor can use to determine the correct encoding, but that’s a more technical topic for another day.
3. Once the file is displayed in the text editor, the user (you) can begin making changes by typing into it, deleting existing text, cutting/copying/pasting, etc. Underneath the surface, the text editor adjusts the binary data accordingly. It’s like rearranging the atoms in our analogy to create new molecules.
4. When you save your changes, the text editor takes the modified text (usually stored in your computer’s memory) and translates it back into raw binary, then writes that data back to disk, overwriting the original version of the file.

What’s the difference between a free online text editor and a text editor download?

At the time of this writing, there are several options available for a free browser-based text editor. Many websites offer this functionality at no cost. These online editors offer some benefits, including access from any computer or OS and the ability to store your text files in the cloud.

For some, an online, browser-based text editor is a good choice and does the job. But for many users, continued use will eventually expose some significant drawbacks. So what are the advantages of installing a native text over using one in your browser?

Performance: Native text editors run faster, with less system resources.

You’re probably already aware that your browser consumes a LOT of memory – often, far more than many other applications running on your system. That includes native text editors as well. 

If editing plain text is something you’re doing quite often, or if you’re working with larger plain text files, or if you want to have many files open at once, you’ll likely prefer the less resource intensive performance of a natively installed text editor. For example, with a browser based editor, the more changes you make to your text, the more memory the browser needs to keep track of things like undo/redo. Also, because of the way a browser works, an online editor is likely going to work your CPU harder. And God forbid your browser crashes before you save your changes…

If you just need to make a one-off edit or even a few quick changes, an online text editor will probably be okay. Otherwise, you really should be working in a native text editor application.

Functionality: Native text editors can just do more.

Modern web applications that run in your browser have admittedly become more feature rich over time. But they won’t ever be able to approach the functionality that a native application can offer. Certain functionality like file system access to find and replace in files, file system exploring, window tiling and cascading, feature-rich file tabs and more simply aren’t possible in an online text editor. And while web applications can offer a breadth of functionality, that functionality often doesn’t go very deep, leading to frustrating dead-ends when you’re trying to accomplish more in-depth or complex tasks.

Offline availability: For when you’re not connected to the internet.

These days, access to the internet is like access to air – we take for granted that it will always be available. And usually, that’s the case. But in those rare instances where there’s a service disruption or you’re out of WiFi range, it’s nice to have tools that are still fully functional. If you rely upon an internet connection to use your editor, you incur a potential point of failure that you wouldn’t otherwise have with a native text editor.

Configurability: Native text editors can be customized to a greater degree.

Online text editors do provide a level of customization and configuration, however most don’t come close to the flexibility of native tools. Many native text editors offer options – key mapping customization, for example – that are OS-specific or otherwise aren’t possible in the limited browser environment. Furthermore, you likely won’t find plugins or extensions available for online editors, whereas these are ubiquitous with most native text editors. 

You might find that an online text editor suits your basic preferences to a degree, but if you continue to work seriously with one, you’ll inevitably hit a limitation in customization or preferences that likely isn’t there with native editors.

Privacy: Your plain text files remain on your local hard drive.

When you open any file or paste any text into an online text editor, that data is going to someone else’s server. Even if the site claims that data accessed in its web application isn’t collected or stored (or is stored but is encrypted) there’s no way to truly verify this without access to the server and application itself. The general rule of thumb is don’t put anything on the internet that you wouldn’t want someone else to see or have.

While cloud storage is beneficial and has its applications, for private, sensitive, or valuable data you need a local editor. That’s the only way to ensure your data stays safe, private, and secure.

OS Integration: Native text editors integrate with your operating system.

Natively installed applications can integrate deeply with your operating system – and other installed applications – whereas online text editors can’t. For example, dragging-and-dropping selected files into an app to open them, associating file extensions to open in certain applications, launching apps from the file explorer context menu, invoking a program from a command line…these are all ways that native text editors can integrate with your OS-native workflow that browser based editors can’t.

If you’re doing any sort of meaningful editing or code development, chances are you’re working a lot with different files, applications, and services all installed locally into your operating system. It doesn’t make much sense to circumvent that cohesive environment for a less integrated experience with general editing tasks. 

Can a text editor run code?

By definition, a text editor itself cannot run your plain text source code. It’s simply an editing tool. However, many editors can launch internal or external tools and processes (like interpreters and compilers) to run the code that you write. How this works is often unique to the source language you’re using.

It’s important to keep in mind that not all code works the same. Some code is open source, like HTML and CSS, meaning it’s delivered to the end user in its code format. The end user then uses their own tool (like a web browser) which makes the code useful.

Other source code is interpreted, which means it must be processed and run by some third party program. For example, Python code is sent to a Python interpreter program which then executes the instructions in the code. 

And of course, a lot of source code is compiled. This is similar to interpreted code, but instead of it being executed by the interpreter, the code is transformed into machine code by something called a compiler. The machine code is then executed by the computer (it’s CPU, GPU, memory, etc.) on which it’s run. Think of your EXEs and DLLs on a Windows computer; these are compiled machine code.

Within the context of writing source code in a text editor, you might do the following:

• Write some HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, then launch a web browser preview to check your code changes. It’s not the editor that’s running your code but a web browser engine that’s incorporated into the editor.
• Write some Python code and then launch a menu item to run it through the Python executable installed on your computer. The result of the code might be returned back to the editor as plain text. Again in this case, it’s not the editor running the code. It’s just sending it off for processing.
• Write some C++ code in the editor and then click a button to compile it and launch the result. Perhaps after compiling, an actual application runs. The editor isn’t running the code here, it’s your actual computer, running machine code that the compiler created from the C++ you wrote.

Which text editor is best for Python/HTML/C++/etc…?

This is a tough question to answer. Certainly there are crowd favorites for different languages, but the reality is that users’ needs and preferences vary so greatly that there’s not necessarily any one standard.

For example, dedicated Python developers might opt for Python-specific editors like PyDev or Jupyter. These editors include specific tools for Python development and debugging and are referred to as integrated development environments (IDEs). For those who might only intermittently need to modify a Python script, a more general purpose and lightweight editor like Sublime Text or UltraEdit is often a good choice.

For C++ development, an IDE is almost a necessity. Visual Studio is the top choice for Windows, and XCode for Mac. For Linux, Eclipse and code::blocks are popular options. Some other IDEs rising in popularity for C++ are C++ Builder, CLion, and even VS Code.

When it comes to back-end web development, i.e. JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, and Python, many users settle for VS Code, which, while not a true IDE, features a robust extension ecosystem that provides much helpful ancillary functionality. 

For front-end web development, like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, many editors like UltraEdit work well. Again, it really depends on what you want out of your editor. Do you want a precise “surgeon’s scalpel” that is highly tailored to a certain language, framework, or workflow? Or a general purpose text editor like UltraEdit which can cover nearly all your editing needs and also includes FTP and SSH, but works for many other text editing jobs as well?

The best way to discover which text editor is best for you is to try them out for yourself. Remember that there are many different jobs a text editor can do beyond just source code editing. Don’t forget to explore as much as you can – you’ll often be delighted by what you discover!

So…which text editor is the best?

As mentioned in the last section, this is a very difficult question for anyone to answer, even for themselves. There is too much subjectivity involved, and it would be a daunting task for anyone to fully and fairly evaluate the vast array of text editors available today.

I’m tempted to provide a comprehensive list of text editors ranked by performance and functionality. But I’m not even sure I could trust my own rankings.

Instead, I’d like to lay some basic groundwork on how you can discover this for yourself.

Determine what’s most important to you in a text editor.

Are you looking for an “opinionated” editor that assumes a lot about your workflow; for example, that you’ll always be using Git, or that you’re restricted to just a few programming languages? Are you looking for a maximally “helpful” editor that aggressively offers to auto-complete the text you’re typing, rearrange your project for you, etc.? Or are you looking for maximum control and freedom and want the editor to stay out of your way as much as possible?

Is a powerful Find/Replace important to you? What about large file and data handling? Do you need to reformat data like JSON, CSV, etc.? Do you need functionality like FTP and SSH to interact with remote servers?

These are all things to think about when evaluating your next text editor.

Read reviews from other users.

It’s no secret that product reviews contain a treasure trove of useful information when you’re in the market for a new piece of software. Oftentimes, you’ll find use cases and solutions to problems from other users that you didn’t even think about. UltraEdit, for example, has over 1100 reviews on G2 and many more on various other review platforms.

Additionally, reviews can clue you in to potential issues or incompatibilities you may have with the text editor. It might become obvious after reading a review that the editor you’re considering is designed for one specific use case or language type, for example.

One word of caution, here – you can get lost in reviews! Gauging the opinions of others is a wise move, but if you put too much weight into it, it can result in analysis paralysis which makes decision-making very difficult. Take every review with a grain of salt, and remember, humans are not objective.

Consider factors beyond just the text editor.

The functionality and user experience of an editor are very important. The most important. But don’t fall into the trap of fixating only on features and functionality without considering other important factors.

For example, is security important to you? Maybe you work on proprietary source code or in an industry where all data must be kept private and safe. Not all editors offer the same level of security or even any security at all. And in the event that a vulnerability is discovered, the response time to patch may widely vary by publisher.

If security is important to you, take a hard look at UltraEdit – we’re one of the most secured and hardened editors available. This is a major reason why we are trusted by so many financial institutions, healthcare companies, and government agencies.

What about support? It’s great if you’ve read that a text editor can do just the thing you need, but what if you’re having trouble figuring out how to do it? Or maybe the editor doesn’t function as expected when you try it? Who can you reach out to? Most free and open source text editors don’t provide any level of professional support. Your best bet is searching online, perusing StackOverflow, or asking for help on forums (and bracing for the inevitable annoyed “RTFM” responses).

Contrast this with a professionally and actively supported product like UltraEdit, which includes world-class support. Need assistance figuring out a regex to extract data from your log files? No problem – send us an email, and we’ll respond with an accurate solution for your specific problem…often within an hour or less. 

Commercial support is also a significant factor for larger company and enterprise deployments. In these organizations, customizations and controls are often needed to ensure the editor complies with corporate policies. It’s invaluable having a support rep at your disposal who can help you with your custom deployment and configuration to meet the requirements of your unique environment.

Try it for yourself.

Finally, and most importantly, you shouldn’t use any text editor that you can’t at least try for a few days before a full license is required. There’s simply no substitute for “kicking the tires” of a text editor to ensure it does what you expect, meets your needs, and just feels right.

That’s why we offer a full 30-day free trial for UltraEdit and all our other products. The proof is in the experience. No amount of marketing or sales can beat a great user experience in a text editor, and we’d love for you to see for yourself! 😉

The post What is a text editor? Help me choose one! appeared first on UltraEdit.

Coupled with our new live preview feature in UltraEdit v25.20, if you’re already writing Markdown documents you’ll be able to enjoy a real-time preview of your rendered Markdown as you make them in your source file. Additionally, we’ve added a completely new syntax parser for Markdown, so you’ll get full, context-aware Markdown code highlighting support out of the box. No plugins to download and install, no config files to set up. It just works—and that’s the way it should be.

Those of you who are already familiar with Markdown will understand why this is so exciting. But there are others among you who have heard of Markdown but have never used it, or who haven’t heard of it at all! So we wanted to talk about some of the reasons why Markdown is so great.

What Is It?

Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax aimed at making writing for the internet easier. The philosophy behind Markdown is that plain text documents should be readable without tags mussing everything up, but there should still be ways to add text modifiers like lists, bold, italics, etc. It is an alternative to WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors, which use rich text that later gets converted to proper HTML.

It’s possible you’ve encountered Markdown without realizing it. Facebook chat, Skype, and Reddit all let you use different flavors of Markdown to format your messages.

Here’s a quick example: to make words bold using Markdown, you simply enclose them in * (asterisks). So, *bold word* would look like bold word when everything is said and done.

All told, Markdown is a great way to write for the web using plain text.

Why Use It?

It’s Easy to Learn and Fast to Use

Markdown is dead simple to learn. The official syntax can be found here, but most of what you’ll need to know is that typing **word** or __word__ will make it bold, typing *word* or _word_ will italicize the word, links are written like this [anchor text](http://www.URL.com), and lists are written exactly how you’d expect: just hit enter and add any of these three characters at the start of each line: -, *, +. So this:

– List item 1

– List item 2

– List item 3

Becomes this:

• List item 1
• List item 2
• List item 3

Or you could always use a tutorial to learn how to write Markdown, like this one.

So typing Markdown is almost always faster than writing with a rich text editor, especially when you start getting into things like links or bulleted lists, which either make you use the mouse or force you to memorize a complicated sequence of keyboard shortcuts. One caveat is that if you need complicated text elements, such as tables, you’re better off sticking to HTML. Fortunately, Markdown has full HTML support, so you can code a table in HTML and go right back to Markdown in the same document.

Plus, it’s much easier to read raw Markdown than it is to read raw HTML. Which, you know, was part of the reason Markdown was even invented.

It Converts to HTML Easily

Now, if you’re going to be writing HTML, you should just…write HTML. But if you’re, say, writing an email or a readme file where you need HTML’s formatting options but not the full breadth of its features, Markdown is perfect.

Markdown converts to HTML flawlessly, sparing you the hassle of opening and closing all those tags. So. Many. Tags.

In fact, Markdown has the software to convert the plain text to HTML built in! So Markdown is actually a text-to-HTML conversion software in addition to being a markup language.

Plus, have you ever tried to convert from a .docx file to HTML? You often get so much extra formatting and spacing that it’s not worth the effort.

Markdown is Futureproof

By “futureproof,” we mean that Markdown is a plain text format. For as long as plain text is the standard (which it will be for a long, long time), Markdown will be usable and openable by modern programs. Compare this to Microsoft Word, which has 8 different filetypes as of 2018. Keeping things plain text ensures there will never be an outdated version, so software doesn’t need to update to keep up with the format.

Markdown does have its own filename extension: .md, but it was designed to be perfectly readable as a raw text file. So it’s safe to say that Markdown isn’t going anywhere.

It’s Used Everywhere

You might expect that Markdown’s use has stalled as rich text becomes more and more popular, but that’s actually incorrect. Markdown’s presence has only grown since its introduction, and it continues to do so.

Markdown is the unofficial standard on popular coding sites such as GitHub. It is also the default formatting option for popular communication tools such as Skype, Slack, and (to a lesser extent) Facebook Messenger. Wikipedia even uses a modified Markdown syntax they call wikitext.

In a world of social coding that’s only becoming more social, the programmer who doesn’t know Markdown will find themselves at a disadvantage (or, at the very least, confused for a little while).

So learn Markdown, if for no other reason than so you can keep up with the industry.

You Don’t Have to Switch Editors to Write Prose

Writing prose has always been something of a challenge using text editors. It isn’t as though it can’t be done, but plain text removes a lot of the formatting options that tend to come in handy when writing prose. This is more of a small inconvenience than a big issue, but it’s still enough that many people would rather switch to their email program to write an email or their word processor to write prose, as opposed to staying in UltraEdit and writing everything there. But with the introduction of Markdown, writing an email or blog within UltraEdit is now a perfectly viable way to proceed. Of course, you don’t have to do that, but giving people options for how to handle each situation is one of the things UltraEdit does best!

Try UltraEdit Today!

If you haven’t tried UltraEdit yet, give it a shot. Its commercial support, world-class security, and generous 30 day money back guarantee are just a few of the reasons why UltraEdit has been going strong for 25 years. With it’s new Markdown support features, there is even more to love.

Plus, you can try it completely free for 30 days!

The post What is Markdown? appeared first on UltraEdit.

Here is a rundown of what you can expect to get from the webinar:

• A rundown of the new plugin architecture and new features utilizing it
• Tour the new macro UI
• See where and how to utilize the new features 

This webinar is presented by Bradley Hawkins (Product Manager) and Johnny Pickle (Chief Architect) with an introduction by Ben Schwenk (Chief-of-staff).

This webinar has concluded. If you missed it,  you can scroll down and watch the replay, skim through the highlights, and access the presentation slide. 

Webinar Slides

Replay

Summary with timestamps

Read the summary of the update on our what’s new page. If you want to learn more about it, you can read our in-depth announcement blog or browse through the following timestamps for a zoomed in look: 

• 0:00:00 Introduction and webinar overview
• 0:03:20 New Feature: Macro UI Update
• 0:07:20 New Features: New functionality using new plugin architecture
• 0:14:20 Plugin Examples: Code Surround + Command palette tips
• 0:16:20 Plugin Examples: SQL Formatter
• 0:17:09 Plugin Examples: JSON to XML
• 0:17:43 Plugin Examples: File Splitter
• 0:18:50 Plugin Examples: Tabs to Spaces (Leading)
• 0:21:10 What’s next for plugins: Software development kit
• 0:26:35 What’s next for plugins: Data/database features
• 0:29:35 What’s next for plugins: AI Features and Support
• 0:31:45 What’s next for plugins: New SSH/Telnet Terminal
• 0:32:38 Question and Answer

UltraEdit has an exciting future ahead in 2024! Download the latest version of the editor now.

The post What’s New in UltraEdit 2023.2 [Webinar Recap] appeared first on UltraEdit.

UE 2023.2 brings forth two long awaited features: First up, an overhaul of the macros interface aimed at making editing and saving macros much more intuitive and easier to use. Secondly, we have our first set of features based upon the newly developed plugin architecture, mainly as a proof of concept—users will be able to submit and share their own plugins later down the line. Lastly, a couple of key bug fixes and an application icon update round up this release.

Download the latest versions of UltraEdit and UEStudio now.

Macros: Updated interface for writing and editing macros

UltraEdit supports macro recording to execute those pesky tasks of repetitive nature. With macros, you can record a set of keystrokes and presses and instruct it to repeat for a chosen number of times.

In 2023.2, the user interface and setup for macros has been redone from the ground up. The objective of this overhaul is to streamline the operation and make the execution process more intuitive. Here is a breakdown of the changes:

• New global and individual settings
• Gathered the main functionalities into a single location
• Condensed most of the options from the ribbons into better-timed dialogues
• Reduced number of windows

Sneak peek of overhauled macro UI. The dialog options have been redesigned and rearranged for ease of use.

Tech Preview: New features using new plugin architecture

This new plugin architecture was first teased in UE 2023.0 and UE 2023.1. With it in place, the editor would have more capable and performant scripting capabilities—and thus more flexibility in the features and functionality possible. 

This release highlights the first set of features based on the new architecture (intended as proof of concept of features not natively hard coded in the base editor). It may be prudent to know that even with this new technological foundation, users will still be able to access and use these features as they would normally.

Here are the new features in UE 2023:

• Code surround

Surround code or text with the character of choice. Choose from a number of options such as quotation marks, parentheses, square brackets, curly brackets, etc.
We are adding a shortcut to do this too.

Code surround options available.

• SQL formatter

This feature reads through a SQL command script or a dump file and makes it more human-readable. It reformats, shortens, replaces long strings, or adds indentation, spaces, and breaks. It will do whatever will make the file easier to comprehend

Reformat SQL files into a more human-readable style.

• JSON to XML

Takes a raw JSON file and reformats it into an XML form. Some use cases include formatting JSON files for simplifying the process of adding entries to a website or a news feed-type application or web resource.

Format JSON files to XML files for easier processing in web-based applications and other similar platforms.

• File splitter

Splits a file according to user-chosen size or number of lines. Using this feature executes a file splitting operation on an arbitrary file and splits it into chunks.
A/N: this might be the first user-submitted plugin because this is based on a script originally written by one of the users in our community, Mofi.

Users define number of lines per chunk.

• Tabs to spaces (leading)

Converts tabs found in the start of a line or file into spaces. UE also has similar functionality for trailing tabs/spaces.

BONUS: Default shortcuts for new plugin features
You can use keyboard shortcuts to use the new features. See the list below or type “plugins” in the command palette:

New UltraEdit Icons

We’ve heard the feedback. UltraEdit is having a new set of icons based on information reported by the community. If you’re out of the loop, some users have reported that they dislike the icons we’ve introduced when we updated the website earlier this year—you can read here for the complete context.

New set of icons to be used in UE 2023.2 and onwards. From left: All Access, UltraEdit, UEStudio, UltraFinder, UltraCompare, and UltraFTP.

What’s Next for UltraEdit?

You’ve reached the end of UE 2023.2 updates. But we’re expecting a lot more for UE in the next year. With the new plugin architecture in place, it’s the best time to let us know what features interest you—or you might make one and share it with the community yourself with the upcoming Plugin SDK for all UltraEdit/UEStudio users that’s coming in 2024!

Watch the webinar from the developer team themselves to learn more!

Fixes and improvements

Apart from new features, this release has a lot of maintenance and improvement items. Most notable are FTP Browser using dockable window font for local/remote panes and configurable font settings for the FTP browser windows.

Here is a list of fixes and quality-of-life improvements based upon user reports and requests. If you have any questions or suggestions, please mail them to support@ultraedit.com.

• Files saved without an extension erroneously have CSH extension
• Hang when trying to access Find history
• Alt shortcuts added to macro play dialog
• FTP Browser now uses dockable window font for local/remote panes
• Extension is incorrectly added when file is saved
• Expose current tab stop value in scripting API
• Reproducible hang when inserting comment on last line of file
• Resolved intermittent startup instability
• Brace matching is incorrect in PHP when strings include braces

For more information about the previous update ( UE2023.1), head over to the previous announcement blog post here. Click the download button below to download the latest version of UltraEdit.

⏰ LIMITED TIME ONLY!⏰

The post UltraEdit 2023.2 release blog appeared first on UltraEdit.

This release is also focused on keeping features and functionality up to date to the latest standards. It also improves overall stability of the program based on the majority of our user reports. Browse the bug fixes and improvements section below to see the full list.

Download and try UltraCompare 2023.1 now.

Merge into New File

File compares in UltraCompare allow selective merging of differences between 2 or 3 files. However, if you’ve ever wanted to compare or merge files without altering the original two files, then this update will make it more convenient to do so. 

This new option, accessible from the folder compare context menu, allows you to create a separate individual third file so you can get a merged version without affecting the original two files.

Expanded Compare/difference alignment methods

UltraCompare now offers 2 difference alignment methods to accommodate data and line differences with efficiency and improved human readability. UltraCompare has traditionally used the Myer’s Difference Algorithm which efficiently finds the longest common subsequence. While this algorithm is fast and accurate, its comparison and alignment of differences at any given local point, meaning within a relatively short common range of lines between two files, may not match human readability expectations. Enter the Patience Diff method which does produce more human readable and expected difference matching and alignment. It accomplishes this by looking only for common elements between 2 sets of data. 

One of the most popular use cases for a diff tool is using it for analyzing source control versions.

Changes in source code are usually defined by blocks or sequences of altered code. As a dev, you see code in blocks of functions or sections, so mentally you might want your diffs to be done this way as well, as opposed to a top-to-bottom comparison of each character in the files.

UltraCompare can now be ordered to use the Myer’s algorithm or the Patience Diff algorithm for a more “context-accurate” result. This new way of aligning and showing results may be desirable for some use cases such as those mentioned above.

For contrast: The Myer’s compare algorithm goes through each character one by one, checking for differences. 

Access this new option via: Settings → Compare → Alignment method.

Integrated dockable PowerShell window

Following from recent UltraEdit updates, comes added support for an integrated PowerShell instance inside the compare UI. Instead of launching a PowerShell manually, a dockable PowerShell window can be initiated using the Layout → Terminal ribbon command.

With this new feature, you can execute command line tasks without having to navigate out of the editor. (We’ve added new command line options—more in the next section) 

New command line options

UC 2023.1 also comes with a number of new command line options—primarily based around Git commands. See the list below:

• -bt Ignore tabs
• -gitcp Compare to previous version
• -gitcu Compare to unmodified
• -gitor Open local repository

“Compare as” context menu command for Folder mode

If you are on folder mode, when you launch a comparison, you can now right click on a file and specify what type of compare to execute. You can choose from the following modes:

• Text compare mode 
• Binary compare mode
• Table compare mode (Excel and CSV)

This is file specific so you can easily swap compare modes in your sessions.

What’s Next for UltraCompare?

The changes in this release apply to both Windows and Mac versions of UltraCompare (with the exception of the PowerShell update which is Win-specific). Linux will follow suit late this year or at the beginning of next year. We are hoping to have complete feature parity sometime soon.

If you have a suggestion on how to improve UltraCompare send us an email. Send us your ideas on what you want to learn more about UltraCompare or any of the products under UltraEdit’s suite of tools. Have specific questions? Let us know what tutorials, blog posts, or even webinars you want.

Bug Fixes and QoL Improvements

• Compare engine improvements
• CTRL+Z results in undo of ALL session edits, not just the last one
• Add support for “Use bold font for differences” for binary/table modes as well
• Allow users to merge “fake lines” over content in file compare to delete content in target file
• Impossible to enter =! in quick find dialog
• Attempting to compare specific RAR archives fail
• Repeated crashes during specific folder merge
• Timestamp difference enhancements suggested for comparing FAT to NTFS folders
• When adjusting columns in one table column widths should be automatically matched in the other table
• Improved application stability
• Allow customer to specify folder that should be used for temp files
• -nonrec should force non-recursive compare but doesn’t work
• Sync rules are empty after install

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