Windows 8 Text Editor With HTML And Formatting Tags Support: TrimWord

TrimWord is a free Windows 8 Text Editor app that allows you to take down text notes, format notes, and even create an HTML page. When you launch the app, you will be presented with two panes – one on the right and the other on the left. The pane at the left is completely black, and this is the text editor screen. Here is the place where you input text or edit it, and towards the right side of the screen, you will be able to see the real time preview of the document that you are working on. So why have two panes? The pane on the left looks more like the command line interface, and the pane on the right will give you a feel of how your actual page will look like. The pane on the right is also useful because the app has a large selection on inbuilt themes, and you can use any one of them to see the final output in various different ways and styles, and another good feature of the right hand pane is that if you are creating an HTML page, you will be able to see the code on the left side where you are actually typing, and towards the right, you’ll see only the final output of how your page will look like after creation in real time (i.e., you won’t be able to see any formatting or HTML tags in the pane on the right).

TrimWord is unlike any other text editor that I have previously used, as it possesses the features of a text editor, an HTML designer, and much more. Right from support of standard line break tags (<br>) to complex table creation tags (<table>,<tr> etc.), this app has it all! TrimWord is available as a free download from the Windows App Store. The app supports .rtf, .txt, .htm, .html formats.

app icon

Working with TrimWord for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1…

When you launch TrimWord on your Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 device, you will be presented with a screen which looks like the below screenshot.

main screen

The black pane is the text editor interface, and the white pane is the text preview interface. Let’s quickly write a few lines of code and see how it renders out! editor and preview pane

As you can see in the above screenshot, my file has been opened and the editor screen as well as the text preview screen are showing me the information appropriately. The text formatting appears differently wherever the formatting tags have been used in the pane on the left side of the screen. You can see the variety of tags that I have used on the left, and how they appear on the right. The app also has error correction facility. It recognizes the incorrect words and underlines them, and you can right click them and choose the correct option from the displayed suggestions.

detection of wrongly typed words

You can see a section of the code above, with the incorrect word underlined and appropriate suggestion shown. From the control bar at the bottom of the screen, you can also choose to change the view mode to editor only or preview only view. The below screenshot shows the preview only mode.

full size preview pane view mode

And the one below shows editor only view mode.

full size editor pane view mode

Themes:

If you look at the control bar closely, there is a button called Themes. This button allows you to change how your text appears in the preview pane at the click of a button! All you have to do is select a theme and voila! Your theme will be changed! The theme list will fly out from the right side of the screen when you click on the Themes button.

themes

Let’s take a closer look.

closer look at themes

You can click on any of the above displayed themes and change the look of your document. You can also choose to buy more themes using the Buy themes button. Let’s take a look at how theme changes reflect in our document!

Before Theme change:

before changing the theme

After theme change:

after changing the theme

If you look at the subheadings, you will see that the text has changed to capitals, the capital letters being shown as larger capital letters and lowercase letters being shown as smaller sized, but still capital letters. Different themes have different effects on the document that you are working on, and you need to mess around with a few of them before you finally figure out which one you really want!

You can now save your file via the Save option at the bottom of the screen (in the control bar). You can similarly open a file previously stored on your device and start editing it as well via the Open File button in the control bar. It should also be noted that though I have demonstrated the use of formatting tags above, you can also use the app without formatting tags to take down simple notes, which by the way, still looks good and you can use themes on them as well! This app basically supports editing of HTML code (and not any other codes!). If you are looking for editing code for other languages, you can check out our review of Code Editor.

 

My take on this Windows 8 Text Editor app…

TrimWord is a great Windows 8 text editor that allows you to save simple text notes, or complex markup language web pages. The best part about the app is that it shows you real time preview of what your final output would look like after using formatting tags, and thus serves a great purpose of allowing you to create fabulous looking web pages as well as simple .txt files. I’m also pretty impressed by the stunning looking themes available by default in the app, and what’s more, the app is ad-free! I am in love with this app, and will definitely recommend it!

I give this app a 4.5 out of 5!

Get TrimWord.