Xpad

Xpad is a tiny and portable piece of software that facilitates a text editor for creating TXT and HTML documents. It features templates and tags with predefined HTML code, along with standard word processing options for all user levels.

Portability advantages

Since there is no installation involved, you can drop the program files anywhere on the hard disk and just click the executable to launch Xpad. Another option is to keep it stored on a USB flash drive, in order to directly run it on any computer with minimum effort and no previous installers. Plus, it doesn't modify Windows registry settings.

Basic text editing options

The GUI seems outdated, made from a classical-looking window with a neatly organized structure, where you can undo and redo your actions, cut, copy, paste, delete and select all text, or insert the system date and time.

Syntax highlights, templates, and predefined tags for HTML

It's possible to enable word wrapping mode, configure basic font formatting options, customize colors, create bulleted lists, align text, emphasize it with underline, italic, bold or strikethrough effects, as well as activate syntax highlights for HTML.
Xpad puts a basic HTML template at your disposal, in addition to predefined tags for inserting tables, paragraphs, images, horizontal or vertical rules, comments, ordered or unordered lists, special characters and effects, and so on. What's more, you can view an automatic counter for all lines in the text.

Evaluation and conclusion

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that the software utility didn't freeze, crash or prompt error messages. It left a small footprint on system resources, running on low CPU and RAM.
On the other hand, it hasn't been updated for a very long time. Nevertheless, Xpad provides you with a basic and intuitive editor for text and HTML, doesn't require installation, and still works on newer Windows versions.