Lately I have been looking around for a text editor that runs on Windows. I tried all of the usual suspects that I have seen suggestions for and they all lack what I am looking for.

Usually, the text editors I find for Windows lack one of the following:

1. Speed…it is amazing how slow a program can be that should be so simple and fast.
2. Lack of polish. Clear bugs everywhere.
3. Taking the ‘U’ out of UI…meaning having nothing close to a good user interface. I found one text editor for example that had 15 menus at the top of the screen, about 200 buttons scattered around the interface, and the options dialog (i.e: one options screen out of maybe ten different ones with all different layouts) puts the Mozilla Suite to shame.
4. Looks like it was written in 1992 instead of 2005. I don’t want icon’s and button’s from Windows 3.1…I want something that feels at home on my XP box.
5. Simple is a word that these programs do not know.

Now I realize that text editors are mostly for geeks, who’s UI standards for the most part aren’t that great. But it is so odd I have yet to find a text editor that offers all of the above: speed, polish, a great UI, looks modern, and is simple. You know, a Firefox-type text editor.

Dreamweaver MX 2004 is nice in its code-only view, but it can be so slow at times it is frustrating.

For the Mac, there is BBEdit, TextMate, and skEdit.

Is it so much for us Windows users who won’t be moving to a Mac in the foreseeable future (for me, $$$ issues prevent me from a Mac at the moment, although I plan on fixing that soon) to have a good text editor? It is rather sad that I feel Notepad and/or WordPad work better for text work then anything else on the Windows platform.

Any suggestions?