Bend Is an Attractive, Inventive Text Editor

Windows: Bend is a new, free, fast, and elegant text editor with a focus on simplicity.

There are a handful of great text editors for Windows but none quite as elegant and attractive as Bend. But along with its Zune-like looks Bend brings a straightforward but highly useful feature set.

Bend supports syntax highlighting for a number of languages and is extensible so you can add more.

Search is very Safari-like, in that the text fades out to highlight just what you\'re looking for.

Bend provides some great display options, too, but keeps it simple so the focus is on the text. You can integrate Bend into the command line and Windows Explorer.

Features aside, Bend also concentrates heavily on speed, using XAML / WPF for hardware-accelerated text rendering. Bend is still in beta so expect a few bugs, but is available now as a free download.

The download mentioned in the Lifehacker link right here (http://lifehacker.com/5604526/bend-makes-for-better-more-attractive-text-editing-on-windows) no longer works, so I\'m uploading it here as an easy mirror.

I did not create this program.

Pics: http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/08/bendbig.png 
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/08/500x_bendsyntaxplugins.jpg 
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/08/500x_bendsearch.jpg 
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/17/2010/08/bendoptions.png

Unfortunately, there\'s only one font.  Either that or I haven\'t found the option.  I give it a 7/10.  It\'s a great program, but it should have more features and have continued to be implemented.

All content besides personal review and the download itself is property of Lifehacker and Gawker Media, LLC.