Use An External Text Editor
 

This seems like a no brainer, but it's worth mentioning. :) If you're going to be doing much editing of your templates, I highly recommend using an external text editor, over editing the templates in the vBulletin admin panel. Personally, I use Edit+ [link. It's not a free application, but given the amount of code that I review/edit/create, it was worth the investment. It doesn't matter what program you favor, it can even be notepad.exe for that matter, but editing your template in a separate (and much larger) window can help greatly. You can check the Text Editors section of download.com [link for a list of editors.

A good text editor has some extra feautres that are nice. One of my favorite features is line numbers. What this does is place a number next to each line of code. Makes it much faster to find problems and resolve them. Another nice feature is text coloring. This allows you to set colors for different types of code. For example, you can set HTML to be in red and regular text to be in black. This makes it easier to decyper your code, or anyone else's for that matter.

I use dreamweaver in the code view. And I have the wysiwyg window open in the bottom for a quick review of what I am doing.

UEdit32 for years! The best (and because that's what I'm used too?) :D Has a "template system" by itself not to mention command line execution of external .com files.

Anyone remember The Pirate Den? The TI chip asm assembler and loaders?

Still 'ave some files laying around somewhere,

Wabbit

I use PsPad.
http://www.pspad.com/

Freeware and works great.

notepad++ (its free)

:D

Although I haven't yet tried it to edit templates, I'd say Notepad2 is pretty good, with line numbers and syntax colouring features.

I also use Notepad++ non bloated program with plenty of features and as mentioned its free (open source)!!

Edit+ is very good. There is thread on vb.com about what text editor the Jelsoft team uses, and although many use different text editors, the thread was so positive about edit+ that I went to get it. Never regretted it.

I use either Dreamweaver or MS FrontPage with split screen mode on so I can review as I edit. It's useful especially due to the multiple undo/redo function.. that can be a life saver :)

Notepad++ is indeed a great free piece of software that's worth trying.