5 Free Online Editors

Editors and word processors are personal things. Some people like command line editors like vi and others hate them. Some people want a GUI but want it to just sort of sit there, others want bells and whistles.

I like online editors because I use a lot of different computers. I tend to store text documents and source code on-line. That way it doesn't matter where I am, I always have my documents and source code available to me (as long as I have an internet connection).

Here are a few different editors (all available online) for you to try. I've run into quite a few editors (amongst other sites) that require MSIE. All of the links below will work with Firefox.

Big Huge Labs Writer - Nice, clean editor. Keyboard short cuts. Auto save. Simple, elegant. Distraction free writing.

Edit Pad - Very bare bones. Blank screen. Just start typing. If easy and free is your type, this is your editor.

Google Docs - Full featres, MS Office compatible, word processer. All the bells and whistles. Now with offline support.

Dark Copy - Another distraction free editor. Small area or full screen.

JavaScript VI - It doesn't get any more painful than this. If you hate VI, do not click this link. If you love VI, now you can access it from any computer.

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ScrnShots - Free Screen Shot Hosting

LewisC's An Expert's Guide To Oracle Technology

This ain't no Flickr! Every blogger needs a place to host screen shots. Flickr is the best place for photos (IMHO) but they ask that all the images you post be photos (not that they're rabid about that). But now there's SCRNSHOTS.com. Unlimited screen shot uploads. You can tag them for easy searching. The photo below is a screen shot of scrnshots.com and it is hosted on scrnshots.com. How recursive is that!

It works pretty much like flickr. Take a screen shot and save it on your computer. Upload it, add a description and tags. Embed it using the provided html. They do ask that you link back to them which is the same thing flickr asks.

On the social side, I've found that people frequently comment on shots. It's fun to browse around and look at the shots other people are taking. I'm going to try to post at least one interesting shot per day and I'll try to comment on any interesting ones that I find.

I am very happy to have this available. I'm not sure what the financial model is for this. I'm hoping they don't disappear anytime soon. Flickr seems to be going strong, especially now that they got bought. Maybe google will buy this one.

LewisC