The friends from 1800 PocketPC recently published an article about NotepadWS v2.56, in which you can read the following description of the application:

“NotepadWS is a text editor application for windows phone with tabs feature and some interesting tools such as the Web Search.”

Sometimes it can be really helpful to have a plain text editor at hand to capture notes or information, with the ability to easily import the text in Microsoft Word 2010.

As far as I’m aware NotepadWS is one of the few text editors for Windows Phone, while there are many note taking applications like Phatware Phatnotes, Evernote, Microsoft OneNote Mobile, etc.

NotepadWS application overview

As you can see in the screenshot above, I have been testing NotepadWS for about a week on the HTC HD2 with Resco Keyboard Pro 6 as the primary way of text input.

When you tap on the cmd-button in the left bottom corner of the screen you open a navigation bar with 6 different menu items:  (1) open file, (2) shortcuts, (3) save file, (4) edit menu, (5) main menu and (6) close current / exit.

In this section of the review I will provide you with an step-by-step overview of NotepadWS, covering the different menu items and options.

Open File

The first menu item is “open fille”, which is more or less self-explanatory !

You simply tap on the cmd-button, select the first open file button. A new browser screen opens, in which you can select the text-file you want to open. By default the browser screen is mapped to the my documents folder; in other words by default it will open the my documents folder to open the text files from there.

Shortcuts

While the userinterface is relative simple and robust I can’t really wrap my mind around the logic of the shortcuts menu. I think the intention or goal is to browse to a specific folder and add this folder to a list with shortcuts, that allows you to easily open and save text-files to a preferred storage location.

It might be a bug, but I can’t add another folder than the “My Documents” folder on the HTC HD2.

Save file

The third menu item from the navigation bar is the save file option. This feature works exactly the same as the open file feature. You tap on the save file button, when a browser window is opened and you can save the text file to the location where you want.

Edit Menu

The fourth menu item from the navigation bar is called “edit menu”. As you can see in the screenshot above it as a pop-up menu which helps you to perform some basic manipulations with the text (copy, cut, paste) or change the appearance (zoom & wrap) on the screen.

Main Menu

The fourth menu item from the navigation bar is called “main menu”, which opens a pop-up menu similar like the Edit Menu. In the right screenshot above you can see the list of menu items:  (1) Find bar, (2) Edit bar, (3) Stat bar, (4) Label, (5) Font, (6) Settings and (7) Exit All.

In the left screenshot above I have enabled a few bars. The dark blue bar on the top of the screen with the text untiteld.txt is the label (4). The light blue bar with buttons just below the label is the Edit bar (2), while the light blue bar at the bottom is the Stat bar (3). The pop-up menu in the middle of the left screenshot allows you to configure the font (5).

The settings (6) are shown in the right screenshot above. Remark the setting to choose the language combination of the dictionary search. In the left screenshot below you can see the Find bar (1) enabled at the bottom of the screen, via which you can find and if neccesary replace words.

Close Current / Exit

In the right screenshot above you see the last button in the navigation bar of NotepadWS. You can either close the current tab, or you can completly exit the application from there.

Google Search, Wikipedia Search and Dictionary Search

The unique features that distinguish a simple plain text editor from NotepadWS are the build in search options for Google, Wikipedia or an online dictionary.

In the screenshot above you can see that I selected the text “Resco Keyboard Pro” and  tap-and-hold to open the pop-up menu. From this menu I select the option Google Search, and on the right you can see the results of the Google Search for Resco Keyboard Pro within the NotepadWS application.

In the screenshots above you can see the Wikipedia search for the selected term HTC HD2. Again you select the text, tap-and-hold and select Wiki search from the pop-up menu. Let me emphasize again, the search query isn’t opened in a new browser window, but presented in the application.

Overall conclusions and wrap-up

NotepadWS is one of the few text editors for Windows Phone, so it is great to have one. Some functions might not be as rich as Microsoft Word Mobile 2010, however I think that NotepadWS is a cool product that includes most common functionality for writing text or taking notes.

I combination with a service like Microsoft Live Mesh or DropBox you will get a convenient way to take notes and use these across different devices. Using NotepadWs in this way results in a competitive offering like Evernote, mentioned in the introduction of this article.

Finally the advanced search features are really cool, and honestly I would expect these to be build into a plain text editor. However it is certainly helpful, and opens up much more usage scenario’s like search client or dictionary !