K’s Weblog

Microsoft has recently released an updated version of its XML Notepad. This is a fairly basic tool which provides a tree interface to edit XML documents which is easier to understand and work with than hacking through the file using Notepad or even Visual Studio.The interface takes a bit of getting used to at first, but the colour-coding of the attributes makes it fairly easy to quickly distinguish between types of nodes in the file, and the tree structure provides a more intuitive view of the data in the file.

Though it doesn’t have all the features of a more complete product like Altova’s XML-Spy, the price is right. If all you want (need) is a basic XML editor, XML Notepad may be just what the doctor ordered.

This is just another in a series of free releases that Microsoft has targeted at the software development community. Beginning with the Visual Studio Express Betas in 2005, carried forward with the full releases in 2006 and the use of the open-source Cassini web server in both Visual Studio 2005 and the Visual Web Developer Express 2005.

It has been interesting to see some progression in Microsoft from a company who would aggressively defend and copyright every piece of software they ever wrote, to a company who is willing to share strategically valuable tools with the community.  Obviously it makes good business sense to get your development tools into the hands of developers before they start that next job; but the optimist in me hopes that this is a continuing trend we see from the giant over the coming years.