A Free, Portable Word Processor For Windows, Including Vista: Jarte

Nothing looks like this free word processor program before. Beside able to open DOCX file, the user interface design really wow me when I launched it the first time. Clean, intuitive, nice menu placement, tabbed documents, eye catching buttons and texture, the perfect combination from all of these form a truly pleasant look while keeping you focus on the main document you're working on. And I can't say how glad I am to have this free to download.



Jarte has all the basic operations you need when working with a document. Inserting tables, spell checking, font and paragraph formatting, printing configurations, you name it. And it has some unique features that are hardly found in other similar programs, especially among the free ones.

User Interface

The Compact is the default view where only several small glossy buttons displayed. Most of the options are hidden behind them. It is just like the clean look of notepad but with some extra juicy appearances like the replaceable texture and the totally different style of the menu placement. Not all functions can be activated by hotkeys, so prepare yourself to struggle with your mouse.

In the Classic view most of the document formatting options are displayed in front, so the memory strength level to remember where an option is located or what hotkey to launch a specific command is fairly reduced. The interesting part of this view is that the side panel contains every command of the formatting which are displayed accordingly when you hover mouse over a button (the formatting menus are grouped on the top left).

And the Minimal view undoubtedly mimics the notepad look.

Some of The Features

• It is both a text and word processor allowing you to open several documents in one window (tabbed-browsing).
• Clickless Operation - instead of clicking, you can display all menus within a button and activate the command selected only by hovering your mouse over it. How long a hover should open a menu or command is configurable as well, from slow to fast timing.
• Text can easily be resized by highlighting it and press the Ctrl+Shift+the down/up arrows.
• Clip List Manager - save your copied items to be re-selected and re-pasted later. This doesn't provide advanced clip saving like ClipMagic, though.
• The Reference Bar enables you to do a word lookup directly to online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia. If you have the great WordWeb dictionary installed, Jarte automatically integrates itself with the program.
• Flexible Font Management - Have favorite fonts you use frequently, or use different fonts in a document? Group them as your favorite ones to place them on the very top of the font list for easy picking. Need more fonts? Find it online using its built-in font finder. Have a font manager program installed? Integrate it with Jarte.
• Fast Paste Action - paste copied items using mouse middle button.
• Paste Plain - automatically strips HTML and RTF formatting before pasting to get a free-from-formatting text.
• Jump from a bookmarked line to another line within a page by pressing F2.
• Optionally minimized to tray.

Jarte doubtlessly is a very good free alternative to Microsoft Word with the whole functions it throws in. It is resources friendly as well, small-size to download, and the startup loading time is relatively fast. However, a few of the advanced features are locked (I don't mention them here). To unlock it you need to buy the Plus version. The free is already top-notch, though.

Jarte works on Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000, XP, or Vista (fully compatible with Vista).