On Monday, I showed you how to host a website on Google Drive, which is a free and easy hosting solution. What if you want to edit the content you’ve uploaded to your website? Well, in a helpful comment, ProfHacker reader Chris Clark points us to a Google Drive app called Drive Notepad, which turns out to be a pretty darned impressive text editor: “View and edit all kinds of text documents in your browser. Includes syntax highlighting for many scripting and programming languages.”
This app is not affiliated with Google, but is the creation of a developer listed as “DM” on the app’s page. To use Drive Notepad, you need to first get the browser Google Chrome (if you’re not already using it) and then go to this page in the Chrome Web Store, where you can install the app. (For help with installing, managing, and uninstalling Google Drive apps, check out this help page.)
I’ve only just started experimenting with this app, but I already have a few observations:
Pros
- Support for a variety of file types, including *.html, *.css, *.js
- Syntax highlighting, which makes it much easier to identify the different parts of your text
- Extensive keyboard shortcuts
- Because you’re working with Google Docs, version control is built in
Cons
- Security? The developer writes, “Hopefully it is pretty secure. Certainly it was developed with proper security in mind. Note however that it has not been vetted by any security experts.” Okay, then.
For more information about Drive Notepad, visit the app’s homepage.
Do you use Drive Notepad? Do you use any of the other notepad apps in the Chrome web store? What’s been your experience? Please share in the comments.
[Creative Commons-licensed flickr photo by Jasleen Kaur]
