A Text Editor for CromeOS
Text
While Windows has Notepad, the default text editor on a device running ChromeOS is called "Text". On first encountering it you might feel it is no better than its Windows equivalent, but it does have a number of undocumented features that show up if you are editing a file with an ".html" extension to its name.
In short, regard this article as less a program recommendation and more notes on features that may not be immediately obvious and don't just open Text and start typing. Instead, have an appropriately named file ready. Open that, delete any unwanted content, then start typing.
If after trying Text you decide it's not for you, then you might want to try an editor from the Google Play store. They're designed for phones and tablets but some work acceptably on a ChromesOS device.
Editor Features
Syntax Highlighting
The first thing you'll notice in the video is that the tags, their arguments and values are all colour coded which makes any bug hunting easier.
Tag and Bracket Matching
Something you may not notice until you run 28 second video clip is that the editor features "tag matching". When the cursor is placed following the first character that identifies the tag, you'll see an underline character appear and they'll be a matching underline in the partner, opening or closing, tag.
The matching facility works for brackets, parenthesis, and braces as well as the symbols that form the tags. That can help if you're editing a stylesheet of other programming file.
Auto-Complete Tags
You will find, as soon as you complete any opening tag, that the appropriate closing tag will appear after the cursor. However, unlike the Monaco editor, that does not work if you add an attribute as you type the opening tag. Instead you have to complete the tag unadorned and then backspace into the opening tag and then add the attribute.
Auto-Indent
Another feature not shown in the video is that should you have turned on "Smart Indent" under "Settings" and you type a carriage return, you'll get a tab as well. This can be helpful if you like you code formatted as you find it on this site.
Lack of Find/Replace
It's disappointing that while there is a "Find" facility Text lacks a replace mechanism.
Related pages: Default Editor, Summernote, Monaco and the External Editors.