10 ms·

Redesigned Notepad for Windows 11

164 points by sendilkumarn 5y ago

orloffm 5y ago
I moved from Windows to Xubuntu recently, and the single thing that I miss most is this feeling of simple sturdy low latency applications that Windows once provided. Notepad, Paint, the whole Windows pre-Vista aesthetic. It was even present in IE6 - every website felt as a heavy paper form in it. Now everything went to Chrome-like weightless fragility. Microsoft should've fixed all the WPF issues (including blurry rendering, stupid lack of margins by default etc.) 12 years ago and made it ready for the cross-platform evolution of dotnet. That would've solidified their desktop presence for a decade at least. Now they are just putting more and more nails into the coffin.
thedougd 5y ago
I would love for Windows to ship with a command line text editor so that I could be guaranteed to have something when using a remote command line. The moral equivalent of knowing vi will be on any Linux system from a server to doorbell. Maybe I'll learn about one from the HN crowd. I've tried my old DOS go-tos (e.g. edit), but they're no longer around. Sometimes I just copy and paste file contents to local, edit, and write it to out with command line utilities or powershell.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  Indeed. And not only that, but for it to work remotely, via for example PSSession.
hvgk 5y ago
Well that’s the one decent remaining bit of windows fucked up.
- stnmtn 5y ago
  What about this updates fucks it up?
  - hvgk 5y ago
    Gigantic menu bar for the sake of one icon. Aka “design language” Aka “bullshit”
    - Lendal 5y ago
      This was my observation as well. I haven't used Notepad in so long, I had to open it for comparison. Yes, they've doubled the amount of wasted space, changing one menu item from text to a gear icon. It's also possible that this is a joke. Nobody that reads dev blogs uses Notepad as part of their mission critical process.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      Assuming you're a Windows or WINE user that uses notepad somewhat regularly, I challenge you to use the new notepad for a month and then try switching back. I'm very curious whether you'll miss more features or be more happy about those five pixels. I do agree, it's completely unnecessary, but I'm still surprised the "bullshit" is limited to those few pixels of menu bar and some actual problems were fixed instead. (This feeling and this thread really go to show what people expect from the brand.)
      - hvgk 5y ago
        I actually use notepad2 when I use windows. Why would I use notepad? Would these changes improve anything? Not really. My key problem is this is epic bike shedding.
        lucb1e 5y ago
        Then why even the vehement response
        5y ago
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  It's 2028. You're done writing a text file and go to save. It's not there. Where's the save button? Oh, there has been another automatic update. You wonder what you have to do this time. You press Ctrl+S. The screen locks. "Microsoft Account is signed out" Sigh. You enter your password. "Please verify it's you by saying 'Microsoft Edge is Great!'" Sigh. "Microsoft Edge is Great!" A Sarcasm Error Has Occurred. Please Say It With Conviction! "MiCrOSoFt EdGe iS gReAt!" An acceptable performance! Please rate Notepad in the Microsoft Store to continue! "1 star" Why do you hate excellent products? Don't you want a fresh and modern editor? Hypothesis: Did you mean 5 stars? Please don't press the second yes option if you don't not mean this isn't your choice: No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes. Uuh... Third Yes. Great! Your rating has been corrected to 5 stars! Please verify it's you by saying 'Microsoft Edge is The Greatest And I will Name My Children Microsoft And Edge!' "MiCrOSoFt EdGe iS gReAtEst And I Will NaMe my ChIlDrEn MiCroSofT AnD EdgE!" Processing accounts and personal information. Security Alert! Inferior non-microsoft software detected on computer! Do you wish to replace them all with modern microsoft products? [ Yes ] [ Options ] Options * [x] Don't Replace The Other Software * [_] Reverse The Above Option * [x] Really Keep Other Software * [x] I'm a cheating bastard * [x] I'm aware Hitler didn't use Microsoft Edge either * Security Options * * [x] Remove browsers not developed by Microsoft
  - hvgk 5y ago
    It sounds like you’ve tried to save a file in Microsoft word recently!
  - wiseleo 5y ago
    This must be inspired by “we see you have Acrobat DC installed so we upgraded your experience to open PDFs in Microsoft Edge”. This thing is responsible for a lot of helpdesk tickets.
- seritools 5y ago
  Yep. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29478878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29478878
  - hvgk 5y ago
    Well shit that’s even more horrible than I had dreamed about.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
neogodless 5y ago
I hope they put in some way to search Bing using Edge, with no way to change the search provider or browser I use.
- tech234a 5y ago
  The Windows 10 version of Notepad already has a Search with Bing feature in the edit menu with keyboard shortcut Control-E. However, it does respect the default browser choice.
thrower123 5y ago
They are really into breaking things that didn't need fixing over the past year or so.
Bjartr 5y ago
I understand it's reasonable to be cynical about Windows, but is it really appropriate here[1] when the changes of note are support for dark mode and multiple undo steps? At least wait for someone to find an actual problem. [1] When I post this, the only other comments are complaints. The ones that are at least complaining about notepad are complaining that MS had the gall to change notepad without pointing to anything specific.
- divbzero 5y ago
  Multiple undo steps is noteworthy. I have definitely lost text when I forgot Notepad’s undo limitation.
- Causality1 5y ago
  I like the feature additions but dislike that there's no visual division between the menu bar and the title bar you can click and drag to manipulate the window. Windows 10 and 11 often make me feel as if I have some disorder of the nervous system as I'm forever clicking just to the side of the interface element I want to use.
  - tacotacotaco 5y ago
    Also, Windows 10 removed the window borders so now you have to resize windows by grabbing their shadow. Years later I still regularly misclick.
    - keyringlight 5y ago
      One of the things I've been rolling around in my mind for a while now is what would a "what's old is new again" reversion to the non-flat/minimalist style look like if done now. One of the things that strikes me with 4k displays is that there's a lot more pixels to throw around at elaborate designs, along with the skeuomorphic/physical representation of interactivity. I'm thinking back to the winxp era uxstyles skins that while they demonstrated Sturgeon's law, also had a wide range of art and ways to make it approachable for people. In the case of windows, changing UI approach again would add another layer of strata with inconsistency, but right now MS's approach comes across as resume led design with a new version of windows to launch with their stamp on it
MAGZine 5y ago
I was a little surprised to learn that my four-year-old processor (i7-7700) was locked out of running windows 11. It's certainly not processor speed issue, it's still plenty fast for games today. It's not TPM either, which it supports. The best I can tell, Microsoft drew a line and said "too bad," for everything before a certain generation. I really only play games on my computer--I have no idea when I'll upgrade the CPU. The last one lasted nearly a decade before I replaced it. I guess it'll be a while before I see Windows 11. I'm not too mad though--Windows 10 is a fine Operating System.
- calo_star 5y ago
  Maybe it has something to do with Meltdown/Spectre mitigations.
- moth-fuzz 5y ago
  You can still install windows 11 straight from an image and it’ll ignore the processor and TPM requirements - they’re considered ‘soft’ requirements even if Microsoft doesn’t say so outright. I currently have it running on my desktop with an i7-6700k and my laptop as well with an even older i7 and TPM 1.2. You’re absolutely correct in that they ‘drew a line’. They have a specific set of guidelines[0,1] they want CPUs to meet going forward, and it’s more of a matter of ceremony and certification rather than anything concrete nor technical. 0. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/compatibility/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/com... 1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/develop/dch-principles-best-practices https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/de...
  - technothrasher 5y ago
    You also can install it by putting the win11 payload onto a win10 install USB stick. Just don't let it have access to the net while it installs or it'll "download install updates" that stop it from continuing. This is how I installed it on my machine that doesn't support TPM.
- jmkni 5y ago
  I wonder if this is because there is a lot of old legacy code in the codebase, specifically for these older processors, they want to remove? I can see the logic in wanting to make the Windows codebase smaller/leaner/etc by wanting to get rid of the legacy stuff.
scoopertrooper 5y ago
Hacker News: Windows is terrible because the user interface is inconsistent Microsoft: Okay, we've made a small visual refresh of Notepad so that it's more visually consistent with Windows 11 Hacker News: Stop breaking my childhood!
- ploxiln 5y ago
  There's literally only one poster complaining about the new notepad UI (a brand new account). It's as much of a meme to see the top post on an HN story is "OMG why are all the top posts such toxic whiners" and scroll down to not see any.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    also for some reason, people really like to complain about HN as though it's a monolith even though a tiny percentage ever comment, let alone complain.
    - fartcannon 5y ago
      Also it's possible that two separate complainers have different things to complain about! Preemptively calling complainers complainers helps quell complaints from fence sitters. It's PR.
      - scoopertrooper 5y ago
        Or maybe when I posted this initially there were 5 comments, all but one having a moan about the UI. Nope, must be paid shills.
        fartcannon 5y ago
        Whether or not you're paid PR, the act of preemptively complaining about complainers is PR.
        5y ago
ng-user 5y ago
It's crazy to me that Windows 11 has already been released and yet they're still adding what should be core functionality to the OS as an after thought. If they are so set on redesigning Notepad and/or all system apps to use the new design style, why would those not be prioritized and included in the original release from day 1?
- cmckn 5y ago
  I'm not sure a slight refresh of the Notepad UI is core functionality of the OS. I don't like Windows, I actually quite despise it, but I think the rolling release approach is far better than, say, macOS' yearly dump. You end up with features that are half-baked or pushed to the next year. Microsoft is taking a saner approach with Windows releases, IMHO.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    I thought Microsoft had announced they are switching to an annual release cycle. I don't think it makes much difference to the quality, some features are too big to fit in a single cycle anyway. The question is whether they have enough discipline to hold back projects that aren't ready. In this respect neither Apple nor Microsoft seem able to say no.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Notepad is core OS functionality? I think not.
  - valenaut 5y ago
    For Windows I would say it is. Windows doesn't come with vi, nano, or any other terminal text editor, and some kind of text editor is needed for pretty much anything you would do with a computer.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
      I have never seen non techie users open notepad or edit config files. In fact I've heard people say that Notepad sucks and that MS Word is better, meaning they are so non techie they can't imagine a use case for notepad.
auvi 5y ago
can you choose line endings as LF not CRLF in Notepad?
- kymaz 5y ago
  That would be a great win for improving linux compatibility!
- recursive 5y ago
  You can already do that in Win10 today.
zingmars 5y ago
This is nice. I run dark mode everywhere and I used to use notepad for quick notes and stuff. Problem is that notepad is a giant wide window so it would burn my eyes out when opened, so I had to switch to something else. Now I can use it for that purpose again... Providing I move to Win11 that is. Still not a fan of the task bar lacking features I use a lot.
kgwxd 5y ago
I assume it will be at least as slow to load as the redesigned Calculator, and bug me to rate it Microsoft Store every now and then.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Yeah, the changes seem ok otherwise, but based on every other application Microsoft has updated with a new look & feel I'd have to agree: it'll take longer to launch, use more resources, and have worse input response times.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  A friend complained about making mistakes on their mobile calculator nowadays because it has significant input lag since an update. Needs a third party calculator app now... I was happy that I could recommend Simple Mobile Tools' calculator, open source donationware and does only what it should. I only know of it because my phone didn't come with a calculator at all, which I found weird too. I use a bunch of their apps actually and they're all great, so this was an easy choice. Not sure what the equivalent for Windows would be, I never saw anyone use an alternative calculator -- unless Google counts but that's not because of problems with calc.exe.
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > Simple Mobile Tools For anyone who hasn't seen these, I recommend them as well. The default calculator works fine for me, but "Simple File Manager" and "Simple Gallery Pro" are fantastic apps that strip out the typical cruft of these tools, and unlike some alternatives (looking at you, Amaze), have no tracking scripts or nag screens. https://simplemobiletools.com/ https://simplemobiletools.com/
- babypuncher 5y ago
  The calculator app opens instantly for me. Maybe something funky is going on?
- koyote 5y ago
  Out of curiosity I just opened up the new Calculator. It took around 150ms to load (at a guess, it was pretty much instant). How slow is it on your machine?? I've also not had it ask me to rate it on the store. I don't think it even exists on the store.
high_byte 5y ago
marginally less suck-ish.
hereforphone 5y ago
Notepad has been an annoyance for decades. Before I clicked the link I thought there might be enhanced features and reworked usability. Unfortunately the new features fall short. The one they seem proudest of is a dark mode.
westcort 5y ago
Microsoft has not added any functionality to their operating system or applications since 1998–only bloat to keep up with the need to create a need for faster processors. I can’t think of one thing I can do in the Microsoft Office suite I couldn’t do 20 years ago. It’s just slower.
- dhruvdh 5y ago
  There is a chance that your use case is basic and hasn’t changed in 20 years, but I think there is a higher chance of it’s a case of general hatred for Microsoft. > only bloat to keep up with the need to create a need for faster processors. Do people not see what their feelings towards Microsoft turns them into?
  - pomian 5y ago
    Why hate? I don't hate, Microsoft or Office, or anything like that. Those are choices, things. You can't hate things. I agree with this OP that office had all the functionality almost everyone needed twenty years ago. Most of the changes to office have been cosmetic and frustrating to established users. Perhaps their could have been add ons - like in browsers, for more functionality that certain users need, without messing with established work flows and ease of use, which are also important.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - garbagecoder 5y ago
    List one feature from Word that didn’t exist in 2003 that you depend on.
    - dhruvdh 5y ago
      I don’t use Word at all, there are many other pieces of software in the Office suite, many which simply did not exist 20 years ago. If you think nothing has changed then it is very likely you don’t need Office.
keeganjw 5y ago
Bummer, they didn't add tabs :(
octopoc 5y ago
Notepad is a decent editor, lacking only a good operating system to run on.
- hvgk 5y ago
  Was a decent editor.
blibble 5y ago
can't wait for the next version which will have an annual subscription cost (or ads) just like solitaire: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic2.businessinsider.com%2Fimage%2F55b6862b2acae76e098b8fa1-1280-1000%2Fmicrosoft%2520solitaire%2520collection%25207_27_2015%252012_24_07%2520pm.png&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs...
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  …and telemetry!
TrianguloY 5y ago
> also adding support for multi-level undo To think that this feature is "new"... I know notepad is supposed to be as simple as possible, a very fast default and always available text editor. But single undo is for me the single reason I always install notepad++ if I plan to use the computer in the future, or use Wordpad if not.
kayson 5y ago
It bugs me that the toolbar now takes up more vertical space than before. Not only does the padding just look funny, but vertical space is a premium in widescreen layouts! C'mon Microsoft!
- picsao 5y ago
  A true knight of dev land knows how to tjhost with the bars of the helmet down. It's a Editor, the text is no central
pantaloons 5y ago
I worked on Windows back in 2014, probably the most surprising thing joining there out of college was looking through the bug database. Every issue that gets complained about online -- and many more -- are in there, and have been for a long time, marked WONTFIX due to a potential compatibility break, lack of priority, or some other policy reason. I don't know if anyone even owned Notepad or any other older inbox apps like the command prompt, but the issues were pretty well understood and WONTFIXed. Single undo, unicode support, unix LF support, etc, etc. For Notepad a frustrated engineer had produced a change-set to fix all of them, and it had sat there attached to the bug for some time. It would surface on internal mail threads from time to time as a joke or a bitter reflection on bureaucracy, and if I recall a VP once chimed in to say they had looked at it, and sadly none of it could be committed due to backwards compatibility issues. Of course the compat issues were real (you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break), but I always though they served as a nice justification for whichever investments were being made at the time: certainly not Notepad. It's nice to see the wind change on that, even if it took a decade or two.
- signal11 5y ago
  I suspect it's a mindset change. Not heeding demand and staying stuck in the past was how Windows became a punchline, although I'm sure enterprise customers loved it. At some point it did begin to change -- I suspect it hasn't changed enough for HN readers. For instance, Unix LF support was added to Notepad back in 2018 (at last!) with a few registry switches for compatibility.[1] [1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/extended-eol-in-notepad/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/extended-eol-in-n...
  - pjc50 5y ago
    They tried about one-and-a-half times to do a big compatibility break: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT and Windows Phone. It was a failure, of course. I'm not entirely clear whether the "current" API set called "WinRT" is the continuation of "Windows RT". It sounds plausible but it could just be Microsoft being terrible at naming.
miles 5y ago
> We know how important Notepad is to so many of your daily workflows… Perhaps the single funniest line ever penned by Microsoft. Cannot imagine any “Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel” who use, let alone rely on, Notepad for any serious work. EDIT: I stand corrected - mea culpa!
- p1necone 5y ago
  I use it for taking quick notes fairly regularly - it's just a blank text input window and it opens immediately.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  I use it all the time as a temporary scratchpad or clipboard. It opens very quickly, it doesn’t have anything else other than a text area. Not sure what else should I use :) VSC? Opens too slow. Sticky notes? Not sure, slow and too complex for the task. Also it’s an advantage that it doesn’t save the state anywhere so I can just force quit and everything disappears. I am missing Paint and Notepad on MacOS when I just need something that opens in a millisecond and I can paste in something temporarily.
  - gilleain 5y ago
    notepad++ is a far superior product imo. so many useful features out of the box, and has plugins also. * search in all opened docs * find/replace with regex * tabs to space * line operations etc Very useful, and for my workflows on Windows, indispensible (even alongside wsl or powershell)
    - Fargren 5y ago
      I use notepad++, but it nags me for updates more often than I would like. If I only need a quick dirty note, notepad is still better.
      - senectus1 5y ago
        lol almost EVERY FREAKING DAY. I still love it as a tool though.
Shadonototra 5y ago
why this late? when was windows 11 released? why do they act a small indie company working on a week-end school project? this is so fishy..
- jenoer 5y ago
  Nothing fishy about it, its proper Quality Assurance using the initial release of Windows 11 as an MVP. If they’d build preview versions of all tools that Windows (11) contains, then release a new Windows 11 preview build any time a tool receives updates (after community feedback) and ask for more community feedback on all of these releases (probably talking a new Windows 11 version every single day) and release Windows only when all the tools and their changes have been deemed worthy/bug-free it will be 2029.
josefresco 5y ago
I use Notepad almost daily to "strip" formatting before pasting content. I hope they don't ever change that ability.
- orev 5y ago
  You might be interested in Pure Text. It’s in the Windows App Store and let’s you do the same using a shortcut key.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  If you are pasting in a browser try Ctrl+Shift+V to remove formatting.
- finger 5y ago
  Ctrl+Shift+V does this as well in many programs.
  - josefresco 5y ago
    Thanks! I'll try it out.
  - Nition 5y ago
    I wish paste as unformatted was just the default.
- kevin_b_er 5y ago
  What I want to know is if they'll start sending what I type into Notepad as "telemetry".
InfiniteRand 5y ago
I don't really see the selling point of upgrading to Windows 11 - what does it get me, a moderate power user who is moderately set in his ways
- fart32 5y ago
  I consider myself moderate power user and I'm not going to upgrade until there's a native way of restoring the taskbar to what it used to be on the previous releases. And by that I mean left aligned tabs with text labels. It used to be that way for about 30 years and I can't stand the grouping icons (both the grouping and the icons).
- wiseleo 5y ago
  Nothing. Windows has not fundamentally improved since Windows 7 for productivity. I use 10 but 7 was great. Well, Win 10’s virtual desktops are actually awesome. I see zero benefit in 11. It breaks my workflow without additional apps. I have my taskbar with countless windows on the right side of my screens. This is not supported under Win 11 without 3rd party tools. All of power user tools are ever further obfuscated.
cosmotic 5y ago
That 'redesigned find and replace experience' covers the text in the same way the old notepad did, but the old notepad you could move the window. I could have sworn it would have supported dark mode too. Was the old notepad using WHITE instead of the system window background color all that time?
jrm4 5y ago
From the Linux side of the fence; Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial? Why encourage or tolerate an operating system (slash ecosystem of apps) with such a limited view of choice? Announcements like this really lay bare the collective dumbing down that these centralized ecosystems encourage. Someone's going to respond with "people don't like thinking about choices for things and just want simplicity," and I will point you to an American grocery store to remind you what utter BS that is. This is monopoly(ish) leveraging, perhaps not at its most harmful, but it's really silly.
- groby_b 5y ago
  I strongly encourage you to occasionally view the world through more than one lens. No matter what the OS, the default editor is important. Changes to the default editor that address long standing demands by the community are important. Communicating those changes to a wide audience is important as well. (And the Linux side of the fence could stand to learn a bit about communicating with the wider community) And that's why that article exists - because a tool used by a large user population just got significantly better. And that user population is mostly happy about the improvement. If you're not the audience, skipping it is an option.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    Oh please. So what I'm hearing is, there are changes in software that a lot of people wanted for a long time, but weren't allowed to have for some reason? If only there were a model of software creation that let you fix that?
    - groby_b 5y ago
      What you're hearing is clearly what you want to hear, and nothing else.
- okareaman 5y ago
  How many people use Microsoft windows 10? Latest: 1.3 Billion https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices That, along with the tendency towards Bikeshedding, or Parkinson's law of triviality, means a lot of people care. Android has a comparable number of users, but I think we should compare desktop PC systems here and in this case, Linux users have much lower expectations of Linux Desktop along with not being nearly as many users.
jansan 5y ago
" are also adding support for multi-level undo" Wow, how advanced. For those of you who did not know, Notepad allowed exactly ONE undo step. ONE! In a frickin text editor.
alberth 5y ago
Pedantic: does anyone find the existence of the gear icon very odd (out of place)?
petilon 5y ago
This is underwhelming. Textarea in any web application has more features, such as spellcheck, and now in Edge, even grammar check! Multilevel undo/redo should have been delivered at least 20 years ago. How about the ability to handle files with Mac or Linux style linebreaks? Wordpad can handle it but not Notepad. How about showing recent files in File menu? Really what Microsoft ought to do is to ship VSCode as the new text editor for Windows (after removing all coding features that might confuse end users). Retain the old Notepad for people who use it in established workflows, no point in updating it at this point because it is hopelessly obsolete.
seritools 5y ago
10 minute QA because they don't seem to have done it: - It consistently starts slower than Notepad3 while having substantially fewer features to load (and also slower than the old Notepad of course) - THEY ANIMATED THE SCROLLING OMG PLEASE DONT DO THIS (especially when grabbing the scroll bar handle). Any amount of delay is too much in notepad - the animation runs at 60Hz even on a high refresh rate screen, so it looks choppy - the animation has to "catch up" when grabbing the scroll bar handle and moving it quickly - 215k lines loaded, moving the window itself is choppy now? HOW - another first party piece of software that ignores the "no animations" setting in windows - I've grabbed a notepad.exe from Windows XP SP3 in comparison, no problems there, scrolling and editing is instant. Both have SIGNIFICANT lag in the new one. - Don't even try to resize the window with a big file open (< 1 FPS) EDIT: Note that I haven't even complained about new features or anything, just the previous, basic features still working correctly.
- thedougd 5y ago
  Does it append .txt when you don't want it to? `Notepad config.rc` ends up saving as config.rc.txt?
- bathtub365 5y ago
  Did they end up hiring back QA or have they stuck to their strategy of customers and analytics being QA?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- d23 5y ago
  I still use notepad to try to avoid all the crap software tries to cram down my throat these days. Sad to see they've managed to mess with this too. I wonder how long it'll be before tracking and dark patterns are shoved into this notepad version (if it hasn't happened already).
  - ripdog 5y ago
RachelF 5y ago
If you looked at the code for the old XP Notepad, it was the Windows standard text entry control resized to full screen.
- DavidPeiffer 5y ago
  Outside of Ctrl+Backspace not working inside Notepad until recently (Windows 10 I believe), I see no problem with that.
Yizahi 5y ago
I wish they would just notify us when this Windows 10X v.2 cadaver will reach feature parity with Windows 10.
lousken 5y ago
I thought the reason for putting apps into windows store was to make them easily upgradable across versions of windows. It is here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-notepad/9msmlrh6lzf3# https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-notepad/9msmlrh6lz... so where did that go and why it is not updated on Windows 10? Why is this exclusive to crappy windows 11?
avgcorrection 5y ago
Does it have freaking linewrap?
- X-Cubed 5y ago
  Word Wrap has been in Notepad for some time, in the Format menu.
  - AkshitGarg 5y ago
    It has been there since atleast windows 95. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/vCJF5UW.png https://i.imgur.com/vCJF5UW.png
  - avgcorrection 5y ago
    Gosh… that has always annoyed me :)
prohobo 5y ago
It seems to me that the new OS arms race is about tooling, not just base UX, and Windows is starting to play catch up. The modern Mac OS and Linux desktop environments don't just match up to Windows, but surpass it in many respects. I wouldn't be surprised to see many "new" functionalities being introduced to Windows tools in the near future, with the catch that you will lose out on performance for a multitude of reasons: like trying too hard on aesthetics, trying to emulate the tooling of entirely different systems, or maintaining backwards compatibility.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  > modern Mac OS and Linux desktop environments don't just match up to Windows, but surpass it in many respects. What are these "toolings" that are missing in Windows? I have found the opposite to be true. On Macos I need an app to properly snap windows, another app to make my mouse scroll properly, another app to have per-app volume control, another app to do poorly substitute paint.exe. Windows has all that and more, built-in.
smusamashah 5y ago
What happened to UI customizablity since windows 7/8? Windows XP use to have software to make shell look like anything. Only ever felt the need for skinning since windows 8 to go back to old UI which has clear borders and boundaries for everything including windows, buttons, menu bars, menus taskbar buttons...and lots of other things. Is it harder to skin now? Why there aren't any software to give windows its classic look back?
- kaetemi 5y ago
  Designers happened.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    To be precise, authoritarian designers who must feel some sort of pleasure in forcing everyone to conform to their ideas. There were certainly designers involved in Windows UI since the beginning, but their purpose seemed to be more of deciding on good defaults (and allowing those who didn't like them for whatever reason to change things like fonts, sizes, colours, etc.) I recall some of the marketing wankery around Windows 11 advertised it as being the "most diverse and inclusive". Maybe the designers were.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  Stardock Curtains can do some light skinning of Windows: https://www.stardock.com/products/curtains/ https://www.stardock.com/products/curtains/
jordache 5y ago
windows 10 + 11 is such a mess. It's just a pretty skin on top of the same Windows NT Window chrome. The modern UI skin is baked in with a bunch of none-sensical UX decisions. I also hate how Windows' happy-path setup, does not encourage use to create and operate with a low privileged local account. Instead, if you click through the setup process, you end up running the OS w/ an admin level account.
- babypuncher 5y ago
  Isn't that how most operating systems are? macOS and most Linux distros direct the user to creating and living in an "Administrator" account, but require confirmation from the user (or extra steps) whenever invoking the privileges that comes with.
  - jordache 5y ago
    That is true on macos. I'm being prompted for any consequential actions. In Windows 10 + 11, that prompt does not exist, if you are signed in with the admin account.
    - babypuncher 5y ago
      Windows absolutely does unless you turn User Account Control off. This has been part of the operating system since Vista.
- pjc50 5y ago
  There isn't any point in having a low-privilege account; all the important data is owned by the user, and system-level protection is gated behind UAC. Instead they're trying to point people to sandboxed Windows Store apps, which is .. not going well.
planetsprite 5y ago
30 years on and now we have rounded corners.
csee 5y ago
They added much more whitespace. In line with modern UI fashion trends. Please can we stop this trend? It's ridiculous. It universally makes the user experience worse by reducing the effective screen real estate for actual work. Nobody cares about the aesthetic, they get used to it after a few session.
- userbinator 5y ago
  More whitespace and even worse, no borders. It looks incomplete and empty.
Tempest1981 5y ago
Did they extend this popular feature? Edit -> Search with Bing... (Ctrl-E)
forgotmypw17 5y ago
If it doesn't collect "telemetry" about every keystroke, mouse movement, and cough, I don't want it.
grouphugs 5y ago
i will most likely never be able to use windows 11 or higher in my lifetime, i'm too poor
grouphugs 5y ago
i will most likely never be able to use windows 11 in my life time, i am too poor. basically this past half a decade for me is saying good-bye to modern technology as it's solely for wealthy white people. good-bye nazis, have fun with the apocalypse
geodel 5y ago
Could it be rewritten in Electron? Out of bazillion words they could have chosen they used "electron" to show a find and replace feature.
- easton 5y ago
  It's UWP. Perhaps it's a joke, i.e "we don't need no stinkin electron like those kids on the VSCode team". Or their sample text was about chemistry and electron appeared in it.
WalterBright 5y ago
> including rounded corners I have no idea how I got on all these years with square corners in my text editor.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Seriously Microsoft must be openly mocking users. I recently had an issue with Microsoft Edge reverting all my privacy settings. They are full on hostile at this point. If you sign into the Windows store then suddenly they revert your privacy settings even if you set it to disable sync.
ffhhj 5y ago
Tech-debt-shockwave incomming!
wiseleo 5y ago
Redesigned search/replace? OK, I want regex support.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
When I saw this, I was really scared that they'd ruined Notepad by adding features. But fortunately it looks like this update is acceptable. I am still worried they won't have the sense to stop, though
reiichiroh 5y ago
Binary Fortress’s Notepad Replacer no longer works in Win11 to set Notepad++
TheChaplain 5y ago
It's interesting how a multibillion company can make a simple editor a little worse, while a single guy with a few contributors can make something so useful (Notepad++). Of course it's important with backwards compatibility but.. is it worth the cost?
perryizgr8 5y ago
Ever since I started using a macbook for work, I have searched far and wide for a notepad.exe replacement and every single app has come up short. Let's hope this revamped version retains the snappiness, simplicity that made the original great, unlike calc.exe's replacement.
clavicat 5y ago
There is something pathologically dysfunctional about a trillion-dollar organization that thinks a few imperceptible improvements to decades-old programs that individual programmers have created far superior versions of for free are worth announcing like it’s a marvel of engineering. We saw the same thing with Windows Terminal—they even made a trailer for it. Like, these are the kinds of updates that would take one person a weekend to accomplish. Nor would that individual think to brag about implementing rounded corners. But the bureaucracy inside Microsoft is so sclerotic and hostile to excellence that even these changes require heroic allocations of effort.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is that they have a marketing problem: everyone knows that Windows has ignored the basics for decades in favor of all kinds of random crap like rewriting their web browser 3 or 4 times, putting adverts in the start menu and so on. But the foundational stuff an operating system is expected to do, like open text files or provide a calculator or a working terminal app, has been rotting away unloved and unowned. So now they're finally (!) fixing some of these issues. They have a terminal that isn't a total embarrassment now. OK it's slow but at least the features are there. They are upgrade Notepad. They upgraded the Calculator. These projects are revealing weaknesses in their new round of Windows APIs but fine, whatever, at least they're dogfooding stuff now and it's not like the original Windows APIs smelled of roses either. As a result, yes, they seem to be making a big deal about stupidly small stuff. But, whatever. I can forgive them for that. They all do it: GNOME makes fancy marketing material for changing icon themes or adding a dark mode to their settings app or whatever, Apple promote lots of trivial stuff as well. It's still better than the status quo of Windows development for the last 20 years.
Mk2000 5y ago
It still doesn't have half of Kate's (Plasma's default editor) functionalities. The only addition seems to be the dark mode, which is very opinionated and unchangeable
- karpovv-boris 5y ago
  It's controversial, for quick/temp notes Notepad works perfectly. In my opinion it does not need to have a lot of features.
AHTERIX5000 5y ago
I just hope the new version is fast and not like Paint 3D which sometimes spends multiple seconds "creating a new project" when opening a simple PNG on a 5950X.
vq 5y ago
"Productivity, performance, and reliability are paramount in Notepad. Regardless of how you incorporate Notepad into your workflows, we will ensure that Notepad continues to excel in those areas." Is this from Microsoft? Is this real?
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  I don't know why you are being downvoted. I used to use Notepad years ago as it's practically guaranteed to exist on every Windows machine. I can't say much about productivity, but performance was abysmal for larger files. As for reliability, the main reason I never use Notepad now, even for most trivial things, is that Notepad++ will always bring my session back, with all open tabs, regardless of whether I saved the file or not. It doesn't matter if my battery died or Windows decided it's now time to restart the system after updating - Notepad++ will keep my work safe and Notepad will not. So speaking about reliability is probably a bigger joke than productivity. They could say "We always wanted to keep the tool light, fast to start and reasonably efficient for small files, and we have managed to do that" - and this would be OK. There is no need to serve bullshit to a technical community.
  - vq 5y ago
    I'm sure the editor is fine for a basic editor that comes with the desktop environment, it looks functional enough, but the language in that article is just weird to me. It reads like some kind of prank.
    - orloffm 5y ago
      It's a "you probably never worked in a corporation" type of thing. Someone is trained to write things like this, and it's impossible for that person to do it differently, plus no one is in a position/capacity/incentive to affect that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lucb1e 5y ago
I was expecting a ribbon or other fluff (like write.exe / WordPad), perhaps even ads (two days ago I saw at a friend's that a Windows built-in game now has ads). Honestly I'm very impressed they kept the simple look. It's just a larger-than-necessary menu bar and some unobtrusive theming and that's it. The toggleable dark mode is also a welcome change for me. I do assume we can open files larger than a few megabytes now and there were some more functionality issues that seemed very 90s, could it be that there was only one undo step or did they already fix that in a previous release? I truly haven't used Windows in, dare I say, too long. Edit: yes I did remember the undo problem correctly and that's finally fixed: "adding support for multi-level undo".
agumonkey 5y ago
"with a lot of effort, Microsoft succeeded in adding undo" not 1987
- melony 5y ago
  If they replace the current high performance codebase inherited from the previous system with a much slower UI people will complain. Not to mention changes in bugs and behavior.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    heh that is true. Even though I suspect notepad.exe to be so naive there's no performance, it's just a visual mmap
melony 5y ago
They should just open source the consumer level userland apps and outsource the dev work to third party contributors. It would save quite a bit of money.
okareaman 5y ago
The greatest thing about Notepad is that it runs and displays a blinking cursor ready for typing in much less than a second for a new document. On my Windows 11 machine it appears to be around 200 msec. I've tried setting my text file handler to other text editors but nothing else comes close to this speed of utility. I'm very glad they are not messing with that. Overall, I'm very pleased with my Windows 11. Everything is just slightly, but enough, better to make it a good upgrade. That said, I read somewhere that Microsoft intends it to be mostly for new computers. It's not a big loss for a Windows 10 user to stay on 10. It's more of a nicety to upgrade. It's better looking but functionally not much different afaik
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  TextEdit on macOS is this fast when set to plain text and not reopening previous windows. The entire app is 2.6mb. Launching with rich text as the default is a bit slower. But hey, rich text.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    Sublime Text, god bless its soul, is right there with it. And TextEdit is less than half that size if you strip out the translation dicts!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - kayodelycaon 5y ago
      Sublime Text wasn’t as fast to launch on my 12” MacBook (RIP), which is why didn’t mention it. TextEdit still pretty much instant. On my intel 16”, Sublime Text 4 is amazingly fast, even with a dozen medium-to-large rails apps open.
  - perryizgr8 5y ago
    > TextEdit on macOS is this fast when set to plain text Not for me. Opening textedit on macbook 13, with plaintext mode takes noticeable time to animate the window before I can start typing. Opening notepad.exe on Win11 is instant. The window is on-screen and ready to take input, before my finger has lifted off the enter key. Not to mention the silly bugs and lack of attention to detail. Open a new file. Don't type anything, it will prompt you to save the file on close. Why?
twirlock 5y ago
So a bunch of shit an amateur dev could have implemented in like half a day.
CivBase 5y ago
Here's a few features I'd like to see for Notepad which I don't think would compromise its performance or minimalist design: - multi-cursor support - tab to indent selection - encoding selection - fully controllable with hotkeys - [optional] line numbers - [optional] visible whitespace characters - [optional] column ruler - [optional] spaces instead of tabs - [optional] unix-style line breaks
jussij 5y ago
Does this mean Microsoft have re-written Notepad to use something like Electron? As the original Notepad was written in Win32 app, doesn't that also signed the death sentence for Win32 on Windows?

164 points by sendilkumarn 5y ago

I moved from Windows to Xubuntu recently, and the single thing that I miss most is this feeling of simple sturdy low latency applications that Windows once provided. Notepad, Paint, the whole Windows pre-Vista aesthetic. It was even present in IE6 - every website felt as a heavy paper form in it. Now everything went to Chrome-like weightless fragility. Microsoft should've fixed all the WPF issues (including blurry rendering, stupid lack of margins by default etc.) 12 years ago and made it ready for the cross-platform evolution of dotnet. That would've solidified their desktop presence for a decade at least. Now they are just putting more and more nails into the coffin.

thedougd 5y ago

I would love for Windows to ship with a command line text editor so that I could be guaranteed to have something when using a remote command line. The moral equivalent of knowing vi will be on any Linux system from a server to doorbell. Maybe I'll learn about one from the HN crowd. I've tried my old DOS go-tos (e.g. edit), but they're no longer around. Sometimes I just copy and paste file contents to local, edit, and write it to out with command line utilities or powershell.

majkinetor 5y ago
Indeed. And not only that, but for it to work remotely, via for example PSSession.

hvgk 5y ago

Well that’s the one decent remaining bit of windows fucked up.

stnmtn 5y ago
What about this updates fucks it up?
- hvgk 5y ago
  Gigantic menu bar for the sake of one icon. Aka “design language” Aka “bullshit”
  - Lendal 5y ago
    This was my observation as well. I haven't used Notepad in so long, I had to open it for comparison. Yes, they've doubled the amount of wasted space, changing one menu item from text to a gear icon. It's also possible that this is a joke. Nobody that reads dev blogs uses Notepad as part of their mission critical process.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    Assuming you're a Windows or WINE user that uses notepad somewhat regularly, I challenge you to use the new notepad for a month and then try switching back. I'm very curious whether you'll miss more features or be more happy about those five pixels. I do agree, it's completely unnecessary, but I'm still surprised the "bullshit" is limited to those few pixels of menu bar and some actual problems were fixed instead. (This feeling and this thread really go to show what people expect from the brand.)
    - hvgk 5y ago
      I actually use notepad2 when I use windows. Why would I use notepad? Would these changes improve anything? Not really. My key problem is this is epic bike shedding.
      - lucb1e 5y ago
        Then why even the vehement response
        5y ago
marginalia_nu 5y ago
It's 2028. You're done writing a text file and go to save. It's not there. Where's the save button? Oh, there has been another automatic update. You wonder what you have to do this time. You press Ctrl+S. The screen locks. "Microsoft Account is signed out" Sigh. You enter your password. "Please verify it's you by saying 'Microsoft Edge is Great!'" Sigh. "Microsoft Edge is Great!" A Sarcasm Error Has Occurred. Please Say It With Conviction! "MiCrOSoFt EdGe iS gReAt!" An acceptable performance! Please rate Notepad in the Microsoft Store to continue! "1 star" Why do you hate excellent products? Don't you want a fresh and modern editor? Hypothesis: Did you mean 5 stars? Please don't press the second yes option if you don't not mean this isn't your choice: No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes. Uuh... Third Yes. Great! Your rating has been corrected to 5 stars! Please verify it's you by saying 'Microsoft Edge is The Greatest And I will Name My Children Microsoft And Edge!' "MiCrOSoFt EdGe iS gReAtEst And I Will NaMe my ChIlDrEn MiCroSofT AnD EdgE!" Processing accounts and personal information. Security Alert! Inferior non-microsoft software detected on computer! Do you wish to replace them all with modern microsoft products? [ Yes ] [ Options ] Options * [x] Don't Replace The Other Software * [_] Reverse The Above Option * [x] Really Keep Other Software * [x] I'm a cheating bastard * [x] I'm aware Hitler didn't use Microsoft Edge either * Security Options * * [x] Remove browsers not developed by Microsoft
- hvgk 5y ago
  It sounds like you’ve tried to save a file in Microsoft word recently!
- wiseleo 5y ago
  This must be inspired by “we see you have Acrobat DC installed so we upgraded your experience to open PDFs in Microsoft Edge”. This thing is responsible for a lot of helpdesk tickets.
seritools 5y ago
Yep. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29478878 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29478878
- hvgk 5y ago
  Well shit that’s even more horrible than I had dreamed about.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

neogodless 5y ago

I hope they put in some way to search Bing using Edge, with no way to change the search provider or browser I use.

tech234a 5y ago
The Windows 10 version of Notepad already has a Search with Bing feature in the edit menu with keyboard shortcut Control-E. However, it does respect the default browser choice.

thrower123 5y ago

They are really into breaking things that didn't need fixing over the past year or so.

Bjartr 5y ago

I understand it's reasonable to be cynical about Windows, but is it really appropriate here[1] when the changes of note are support for dark mode and multiple undo steps? At least wait for someone to find an actual problem. [1] When I post this, the only other comments are complaints. The ones that are at least complaining about notepad are complaining that MS had the gall to change notepad without pointing to anything specific.

divbzero 5y ago
Multiple undo steps is noteworthy. I have definitely lost text when I forgot Notepad’s undo limitation.
Causality1 5y ago
I like the feature additions but dislike that there's no visual division between the menu bar and the title bar you can click and drag to manipulate the window. Windows 10 and 11 often make me feel as if I have some disorder of the nervous system as I'm forever clicking just to the side of the interface element I want to use.
- tacotacotaco 5y ago
  Also, Windows 10 removed the window borders so now you have to resize windows by grabbing their shadow. Years later I still regularly misclick.
  - keyringlight 5y ago
    One of the things I've been rolling around in my mind for a while now is what would a "what's old is new again" reversion to the non-flat/minimalist style look like if done now. One of the things that strikes me with 4k displays is that there's a lot more pixels to throw around at elaborate designs, along with the skeuomorphic/physical representation of interactivity. I'm thinking back to the winxp era uxstyles skins that while they demonstrated Sturgeon's law, also had a wide range of art and ways to make it approachable for people. In the case of windows, changing UI approach again would add another layer of strata with inconsistency, but right now MS's approach comes across as resume led design with a new version of windows to launch with their stamp on it

MAGZine 5y ago

I was a little surprised to learn that my four-year-old processor (i7-7700) was locked out of running windows 11. It's certainly not processor speed issue, it's still plenty fast for games today. It's not TPM either, which it supports. The best I can tell, Microsoft drew a line and said "too bad," for everything before a certain generation. I really only play games on my computer--I have no idea when I'll upgrade the CPU. The last one lasted nearly a decade before I replaced it. I guess it'll be a while before I see Windows 11. I'm not too mad though--Windows 10 is a fine Operating System.

calo_star 5y ago
Maybe it has something to do with Meltdown/Spectre mitigations.
moth-fuzz 5y ago
You can still install windows 11 straight from an image and it’ll ignore the processor and TPM requirements - they’re considered ‘soft’ requirements even if Microsoft doesn’t say so outright. I currently have it running on my desktop with an i7-6700k and my laptop as well with an even older i7 and TPM 1.2. You’re absolutely correct in that they ‘drew a line’. They have a specific set of guidelines[0,1] they want CPUs to meet going forward, and it’s more of a matter of ceremony and certification rather than anything concrete nor technical. 0. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/compatibility/ https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/com... 1. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/develop/dch-principles-best-practices https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/de...
- technothrasher 5y ago
  You also can install it by putting the win11 payload onto a win10 install USB stick. Just don't let it have access to the net while it installs or it'll "download install updates" that stop it from continuing. This is how I installed it on my machine that doesn't support TPM.
jmkni 5y ago
I wonder if this is because there is a lot of old legacy code in the codebase, specifically for these older processors, they want to remove? I can see the logic in wanting to make the Windows codebase smaller/leaner/etc by wanting to get rid of the legacy stuff.

scoopertrooper 5y ago

Hacker News: Windows is terrible because the user interface is inconsistent Microsoft: Okay, we've made a small visual refresh of Notepad so that it's more visually consistent with Windows 11 Hacker News: Stop breaking my childhood!

ploxiln 5y ago
There's literally only one poster complaining about the new notepad UI (a brand new account). It's as much of a meme to see the top post on an HN story is "OMG why are all the top posts such toxic whiners" and scroll down to not see any.
- freedomben 5y ago
  also for some reason, people really like to complain about HN as though it's a monolith even though a tiny percentage ever comment, let alone complain.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    Also it's possible that two separate complainers have different things to complain about! Preemptively calling complainers complainers helps quell complaints from fence sitters. It's PR.
    - scoopertrooper 5y ago
      Or maybe when I posted this initially there were 5 comments, all but one having a moan about the UI. Nope, must be paid shills.
      - fartcannon 5y ago
        Whether or not you're paid PR, the act of preemptively complaining about complainers is PR.
        5y ago

ng-user 5y ago

It's crazy to me that Windows 11 has already been released and yet they're still adding what should be core functionality to the OS as an after thought. If they are so set on redesigning Notepad and/or all system apps to use the new design style, why would those not be prioritized and included in the original release from day 1?

cmckn 5y ago
I'm not sure a slight refresh of the Notepad UI is core functionality of the OS. I don't like Windows, I actually quite despise it, but I think the rolling release approach is far better than, say, macOS' yearly dump. You end up with features that are half-baked or pushed to the next year. Microsoft is taking a saner approach with Windows releases, IMHO.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  I thought Microsoft had announced they are switching to an annual release cycle. I don't think it makes much difference to the quality, some features are too big to fit in a single cycle anyway. The question is whether they have enough discipline to hold back projects that aren't ready. In this respect neither Apple nor Microsoft seem able to say no.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Notepad is core OS functionality? I think not.
- valenaut 5y ago
  For Windows I would say it is. Windows doesn't come with vi, nano, or any other terminal text editor, and some kind of text editor is needed for pretty much anything you would do with a computer.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    I have never seen non techie users open notepad or edit config files. In fact I've heard people say that Notepad sucks and that MS Word is better, meaning they are so non techie they can't imagine a use case for notepad.

auvi 5y ago

can you choose line endings as LF not CRLF in Notepad?

kymaz 5y ago
That would be a great win for improving linux compatibility!
recursive 5y ago
You can already do that in Win10 today.

zingmars 5y ago

This is nice. I run dark mode everywhere and I used to use notepad for quick notes and stuff. Problem is that notepad is a giant wide window so it would burn my eyes out when opened, so I had to switch to something else. Now I can use it for that purpose again... Providing I move to Win11 that is. Still not a fan of the task bar lacking features I use a lot.

kgwxd 5y ago

I assume it will be at least as slow to load as the redesigned Calculator, and bug me to rate it Microsoft Store every now and then.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Yeah, the changes seem ok otherwise, but based on every other application Microsoft has updated with a new look & feel I'd have to agree: it'll take longer to launch, use more resources, and have worse input response times.
lucb1e 5y ago
A friend complained about making mistakes on their mobile calculator nowadays because it has significant input lag since an update. Needs a third party calculator app now... I was happy that I could recommend Simple Mobile Tools' calculator, open source donationware and does only what it should. I only know of it because my phone didn't come with a calculator at all, which I found weird too. I use a bunch of their apps actually and they're all great, so this was an easy choice. Not sure what the equivalent for Windows would be, I never saw anyone use an alternative calculator -- unless Google counts but that's not because of problems with calc.exe.
- bscphil 5y ago
  > Simple Mobile Tools For anyone who hasn't seen these, I recommend them as well. The default calculator works fine for me, but "Simple File Manager" and "Simple Gallery Pro" are fantastic apps that strip out the typical cruft of these tools, and unlike some alternatives (looking at you, Amaze), have no tracking scripts or nag screens. https://simplemobiletools.com/ https://simplemobiletools.com/
babypuncher 5y ago
The calculator app opens instantly for me. Maybe something funky is going on?
koyote 5y ago
Out of curiosity I just opened up the new Calculator. It took around 150ms to load (at a guess, it was pretty much instant). How slow is it on your machine?? I've also not had it ask me to rate it on the store. I don't think it even exists on the store.

high_byte 5y ago

marginally less suck-ish.

hereforphone 5y ago

Notepad has been an annoyance for decades. Before I clicked the link I thought there might be enhanced features and reworked usability. Unfortunately the new features fall short. The one they seem proudest of is a dark mode.

westcort 5y ago

Microsoft has not added any functionality to their operating system or applications since 1998–only bloat to keep up with the need to create a need for faster processors. I can’t think of one thing I can do in the Microsoft Office suite I couldn’t do 20 years ago. It’s just slower.

dhruvdh 5y ago
There is a chance that your use case is basic and hasn’t changed in 20 years, but I think there is a higher chance of it’s a case of general hatred for Microsoft. > only bloat to keep up with the need to create a need for faster processors. Do people not see what their feelings towards Microsoft turns them into?
- pomian 5y ago
  Why hate? I don't hate, Microsoft or Office, or anything like that. Those are choices, things. You can't hate things. I agree with this OP that office had all the functionality almost everyone needed twenty years ago. Most of the changes to office have been cosmetic and frustrating to established users. Perhaps their could have been add ons - like in browsers, for more functionality that certain users need, without messing with established work flows and ease of use, which are also important.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- garbagecoder 5y ago
  List one feature from Word that didn’t exist in 2003 that you depend on.
  - dhruvdh 5y ago
    I don’t use Word at all, there are many other pieces of software in the Office suite, many which simply did not exist 20 years ago. If you think nothing has changed then it is very likely you don’t need Office.

keeganjw 5y ago

Bummer, they didn't add tabs :(

octopoc 5y ago

Notepad is a decent editor, lacking only a good operating system to run on.

hvgk 5y ago
Was a decent editor.

blibble 5y ago

can't wait for the next version which will have an annual subscription cost (or ads) just like solitaire: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic2.businessinsider.com%2Fimage%2F55b6862b2acae76e098b8fa1-1280-1000%2Fmicrosoft%2520solitaire%2520collection%25207_27_2015%252012_24_07%2520pm.png&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fs...

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
…and telemetry!

TrianguloY 5y ago

> also adding support for multi-level undo To think that this feature is "new"... I know notepad is supposed to be as simple as possible, a very fast default and always available text editor. But single undo is for me the single reason I always install notepad++ if I plan to use the computer in the future, or use Wordpad if not.

kayson 5y ago

It bugs me that the toolbar now takes up more vertical space than before. Not only does the padding just look funny, but vertical space is a premium in widescreen layouts! C'mon Microsoft!

picsao 5y ago
A true knight of dev land knows how to tjhost with the bars of the helmet down. It's a Editor, the text is no central

pantaloons 5y ago

I worked on Windows back in 2014, probably the most surprising thing joining there out of college was looking through the bug database. Every issue that gets complained about online -- and many more -- are in there, and have been for a long time, marked WONTFIX due to a potential compatibility break, lack of priority, or some other policy reason. I don't know if anyone even owned Notepad or any other older inbox apps like the command prompt, but the issues were pretty well understood and WONTFIXed. Single undo, unicode support, unix LF support, etc, etc. For Notepad a frustrated engineer had produced a change-set to fix all of them, and it had sat there attached to the bug for some time. It would surface on internal mail threads from time to time as a joke or a bitter reflection on bureaucracy, and if I recall a VP once chimed in to say they had looked at it, and sadly none of it could be committed due to backwards compatibility issues. Of course the compat issues were real (you could view reports on which obscure apps hooked into this or that internal code of cmd.exe or Notepad and would break), but I always though they served as a nice justification for whichever investments were being made at the time: certainly not Notepad. It's nice to see the wind change on that, even if it took a decade or two.

signal11 5y ago
I suspect it's a mindset change. Not heeding demand and staying stuck in the past was how Windows became a punchline, although I'm sure enterprise customers loved it. At some point it did begin to change -- I suspect it hasn't changed enough for HN readers. For instance, Unix LF support was added to Notepad back in 2018 (at last!) with a few registry switches for compatibility.[1] [1] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/extended-eol-in-notepad/ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/extended-eol-in-n...
- pjc50 5y ago
  They tried about one-and-a-half times to do a big compatibility break: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT and Windows Phone. It was a failure, of course. I'm not entirely clear whether the "current" API set called "WinRT" is the continuation of "Windows RT". It sounds plausible but it could just be Microsoft being terrible at naming.

miles 5y ago

> We know how important Notepad is to so many of your daily workflows… Perhaps the single funniest line ever penned by Microsoft. Cannot imagine any “Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel” who use, let alone rely on, Notepad for any serious work. EDIT: I stand corrected - mea culpa!

p1necone 5y ago
I use it for taking quick notes fairly regularly - it's just a blank text input window and it opens immediately.
sz4kerto 5y ago
I use it all the time as a temporary scratchpad or clipboard. It opens very quickly, it doesn’t have anything else other than a text area. Not sure what else should I use :) VSC? Opens too slow. Sticky notes? Not sure, slow and too complex for the task. Also it’s an advantage that it doesn’t save the state anywhere so I can just force quit and everything disappears. I am missing Paint and Notepad on MacOS when I just need something that opens in a millisecond and I can paste in something temporarily.
- gilleain 5y ago
  notepad++ is a far superior product imo. so many useful features out of the box, and has plugins also. * search in all opened docs * find/replace with regex * tabs to space * line operations etc Very useful, and for my workflows on Windows, indispensible (even alongside wsl or powershell)
  - Fargren 5y ago
    I use notepad++, but it nags me for updates more often than I would like. If I only need a quick dirty note, notepad is still better.
    - senectus1 5y ago
      lol almost EVERY FREAKING DAY. I still love it as a tool though.

Shadonototra 5y ago

why this late? when was windows 11 released? why do they act a small indie company working on a week-end school project? this is so fishy..

jenoer 5y ago
Nothing fishy about it, its proper Quality Assurance using the initial release of Windows 11 as an MVP. If they’d build preview versions of all tools that Windows (11) contains, then release a new Windows 11 preview build any time a tool receives updates (after community feedback) and ask for more community feedback on all of these releases (probably talking a new Windows 11 version every single day) and release Windows only when all the tools and their changes have been deemed worthy/bug-free it will be 2029.

josefresco 5y ago

I use Notepad almost daily to "strip" formatting before pasting content. I hope they don't ever change that ability.

orev 5y ago
You might be interested in Pure Text. It’s in the Windows App Store and let’s you do the same using a shortcut key.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
If you are pasting in a browser try Ctrl+Shift+V to remove formatting.
finger 5y ago
Ctrl+Shift+V does this as well in many programs.
- josefresco 5y ago
  Thanks! I'll try it out.
- Nition 5y ago
  I wish paste as unformatted was just the default.
kevin_b_er 5y ago
What I want to know is if they'll start sending what I type into Notepad as "telemetry".

InfiniteRand 5y ago

I don't really see the selling point of upgrading to Windows 11 - what does it get me, a moderate power user who is moderately set in his ways

fart32 5y ago
I consider myself moderate power user and I'm not going to upgrade until there's a native way of restoring the taskbar to what it used to be on the previous releases. And by that I mean left aligned tabs with text labels. It used to be that way for about 30 years and I can't stand the grouping icons (both the grouping and the icons).
wiseleo 5y ago
Nothing. Windows has not fundamentally improved since Windows 7 for productivity. I use 10 but 7 was great. Well, Win 10’s virtual desktops are actually awesome. I see zero benefit in 11. It breaks my workflow without additional apps. I have my taskbar with countless windows on the right side of my screens. This is not supported under Win 11 without 3rd party tools. All of power user tools are ever further obfuscated.

cosmotic 5y ago

That 'redesigned find and replace experience' covers the text in the same way the old notepad did, but the old notepad you could move the window. I could have sworn it would have supported dark mode too. Was the old notepad using WHITE instead of the system window background color all that time?

jrm4 5y ago

From the Linux side of the fence; Like, why. Why ANY OF THIS. Why a big "important sounding" announcement for something so trivial? Why encourage or tolerate an operating system (slash ecosystem of apps) with such a limited view of choice? Announcements like this really lay bare the collective dumbing down that these centralized ecosystems encourage. Someone's going to respond with "people don't like thinking about choices for things and just want simplicity," and I will point you to an American grocery store to remind you what utter BS that is. This is monopoly(ish) leveraging, perhaps not at its most harmful, but it's really silly.

groby_b 5y ago
I strongly encourage you to occasionally view the world through more than one lens. No matter what the OS, the default editor is important. Changes to the default editor that address long standing demands by the community are important. Communicating those changes to a wide audience is important as well. (And the Linux side of the fence could stand to learn a bit about communicating with the wider community) And that's why that article exists - because a tool used by a large user population just got significantly better. And that user population is mostly happy about the improvement. If you're not the audience, skipping it is an option.
- jrm4 5y ago
  Oh please. So what I'm hearing is, there are changes in software that a lot of people wanted for a long time, but weren't allowed to have for some reason? If only there were a model of software creation that let you fix that?
  - groby_b 5y ago
    What you're hearing is clearly what you want to hear, and nothing else.
okareaman 5y ago
How many people use Microsoft windows 10? Latest: 1.3 Billion https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices https://news.microsoft.com/bythenumbers/en/windowsdevices That, along with the tendency towards Bikeshedding, or Parkinson's law of triviality, means a lot of people care. Android has a comparable number of users, but I think we should compare desktop PC systems here and in this case, Linux users have much lower expectations of Linux Desktop along with not being nearly as many users.

jansan 5y ago

" are also adding support for multi-level undo" Wow, how advanced. For those of you who did not know, Notepad allowed exactly ONE undo step. ONE! In a frickin text editor.

alberth 5y ago

Pedantic: does anyone find the existence of the gear icon very odd (out of place)?

petilon 5y ago

This is underwhelming. Textarea in any web application has more features, such as spellcheck, and now in Edge, even grammar check! Multilevel undo/redo should have been delivered at least 20 years ago. How about the ability to handle files with Mac or Linux style linebreaks? Wordpad can handle it but not Notepad. How about showing recent files in File menu? Really what Microsoft ought to do is to ship VSCode as the new text editor for Windows (after removing all coding features that might confuse end users). Retain the old Notepad for people who use it in established workflows, no point in updating it at this point because it is hopelessly obsolete.

seritools 5y ago

10 minute QA because they don't seem to have done it: - It consistently starts slower than Notepad3 while having substantially fewer features to load (and also slower than the old Notepad of course) - THEY ANIMATED THE SCROLLING OMG PLEASE DONT DO THIS (especially when grabbing the scroll bar handle). Any amount of delay is too much in notepad - the animation runs at 60Hz even on a high refresh rate screen, so it looks choppy - the animation has to "catch up" when grabbing the scroll bar handle and moving it quickly - 215k lines loaded, moving the window itself is choppy now? HOW - another first party piece of software that ignores the "no animations" setting in windows - I've grabbed a notepad.exe from Windows XP SP3 in comparison, no problems there, scrolling and editing is instant. Both have SIGNIFICANT lag in the new one. - Don't even try to resize the window with a big file open (< 1 FPS) EDIT: Note that I haven't even complained about new features or anything, just the previous, basic features still working correctly.

thedougd 5y ago
Does it append .txt when you don't want it to? `Notepad config.rc` ends up saving as config.rc.txt?
bathtub365 5y ago
Did they end up hiring back QA or have they stuck to their strategy of customers and analytics being QA?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
d23 5y ago
I still use notepad to try to avoid all the crap software tries to cram down my throat these days. Sad to see they've managed to mess with this too. I wonder how long it'll be before tracking and dark patterns are shoved into this notepad version (if it hasn't happened already).
- ripdog 5y ago

RachelF 5y ago

If you looked at the code for the old XP Notepad, it was the Windows standard text entry control resized to full screen.

DavidPeiffer 5y ago
Outside of Ctrl+Backspace not working inside Notepad until recently (Windows 10 I believe), I see no problem with that.

Yizahi 5y ago

I wish they would just notify us when this Windows 10X v.2 cadaver will reach feature parity with Windows 10.

lousken 5y ago

I thought the reason for putting apps into windows store was to make them easily upgradable across versions of windows. It is here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-notepad/9msmlrh6lzf3# https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-notepad/9msmlrh6lz... so where did that go and why it is not updated on Windows 10? Why is this exclusive to crappy windows 11?

avgcorrection 5y ago

Does it have freaking linewrap?

X-Cubed 5y ago
Word Wrap has been in Notepad for some time, in the Format menu.
- AkshitGarg 5y ago
  It has been there since atleast windows 95. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/vCJF5UW.png https://i.imgur.com/vCJF5UW.png
- avgcorrection 5y ago
  Gosh… that has always annoyed me :)

prohobo 5y ago

It seems to me that the new OS arms race is about tooling, not just base UX, and Windows is starting to play catch up. The modern Mac OS and Linux desktop environments don't just match up to Windows, but surpass it in many respects. I wouldn't be surprised to see many "new" functionalities being introduced to Windows tools in the near future, with the catch that you will lose out on performance for a multitude of reasons: like trying too hard on aesthetics, trying to emulate the tooling of entirely different systems, or maintaining backwards compatibility.

perryizgr8 5y ago
> modern Mac OS and Linux desktop environments don't just match up to Windows, but surpass it in many respects. What are these "toolings" that are missing in Windows? I have found the opposite to be true. On Macos I need an app to properly snap windows, another app to make my mouse scroll properly, another app to have per-app volume control, another app to do poorly substitute paint.exe. Windows has all that and more, built-in.

smusamashah 5y ago

What happened to UI customizablity since windows 7/8? Windows XP use to have software to make shell look like anything. Only ever felt the need for skinning since windows 8 to go back to old UI which has clear borders and boundaries for everything including windows, buttons, menu bars, menus taskbar buttons...and lots of other things. Is it harder to skin now? Why there aren't any software to give windows its classic look back?

kaetemi 5y ago
Designers happened.
- userbinator 5y ago
  To be precise, authoritarian designers who must feel some sort of pleasure in forcing everyone to conform to their ideas. There were certainly designers involved in Windows UI since the beginning, but their purpose seemed to be more of deciding on good defaults (and allowing those who didn't like them for whatever reason to change things like fonts, sizes, colours, etc.) I recall some of the marketing wankery around Windows 11 advertised it as being the "most diverse and inclusive". Maybe the designers were.
roywiggins 5y ago
Stardock Curtains can do some light skinning of Windows: https://www.stardock.com/products/curtains/ https://www.stardock.com/products/curtains/

jordache 5y ago

windows 10 + 11 is such a mess. It's just a pretty skin on top of the same Windows NT Window chrome. The modern UI skin is baked in with a bunch of none-sensical UX decisions. I also hate how Windows' happy-path setup, does not encourage use to create and operate with a low privileged local account. Instead, if you click through the setup process, you end up running the OS w/ an admin level account.

babypuncher 5y ago
Isn't that how most operating systems are? macOS and most Linux distros direct the user to creating and living in an "Administrator" account, but require confirmation from the user (or extra steps) whenever invoking the privileges that comes with.
- jordache 5y ago
  That is true on macos. I'm being prompted for any consequential actions. In Windows 10 + 11, that prompt does not exist, if you are signed in with the admin account.
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    Windows absolutely does unless you turn User Account Control off. This has been part of the operating system since Vista.
pjc50 5y ago
There isn't any point in having a low-privilege account; all the important data is owned by the user, and system-level protection is gated behind UAC. Instead they're trying to point people to sandboxed Windows Store apps, which is .. not going well.

planetsprite 5y ago

30 years on and now we have rounded corners.

csee 5y ago

They added much more whitespace. In line with modern UI fashion trends. Please can we stop this trend? It's ridiculous. It universally makes the user experience worse by reducing the effective screen real estate for actual work. Nobody cares about the aesthetic, they get used to it after a few session.

userbinator 5y ago
More whitespace and even worse, no borders. It looks incomplete and empty.

Tempest1981 5y ago

Did they extend this popular feature? Edit -> Search with Bing... (Ctrl-E)

forgotmypw17 5y ago

If it doesn't collect "telemetry" about every keystroke, mouse movement, and cough, I don't want it.

grouphugs 5y ago

i will most likely never be able to use windows 11 or higher in my lifetime, i'm too poor

grouphugs 5y ago

i will most likely never be able to use windows 11 in my life time, i am too poor. basically this past half a decade for me is saying good-bye to modern technology as it's solely for wealthy white people. good-bye nazis, have fun with the apocalypse

geodel 5y ago

Could it be rewritten in Electron? Out of bazillion words they could have chosen they used "electron" to show a find and replace feature.

easton 5y ago
It's UWP. Perhaps it's a joke, i.e "we don't need no stinkin electron like those kids on the VSCode team". Or their sample text was about chemistry and electron appeared in it.

WalterBright 5y ago

> including rounded corners I have no idea how I got on all these years with square corners in my text editor.

encryptluks2 5y ago
Seriously Microsoft must be openly mocking users. I recently had an issue with Microsoft Edge reverting all my privacy settings. They are full on hostile at this point. If you sign into the Windows store then suddenly they revert your privacy settings even if you set it to disable sync.

ffhhj 5y ago

Tech-debt-shockwave incomming!

wiseleo 5y ago

Redesigned search/replace? OK, I want regex support.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

When I saw this, I was really scared that they'd ruined Notepad by adding features. But fortunately it looks like this update is acceptable. I am still worried they won't have the sense to stop, though

reiichiroh 5y ago

Binary Fortress’s Notepad Replacer no longer works in Win11 to set Notepad++

TheChaplain 5y ago

It's interesting how a multibillion company can make a simple editor a little worse, while a single guy with a few contributors can make something so useful (Notepad++). Of course it's important with backwards compatibility but.. is it worth the cost?

perryizgr8 5y ago

Ever since I started using a macbook for work, I have searched far and wide for a notepad.exe replacement and every single app has come up short. Let's hope this revamped version retains the snappiness, simplicity that made the original great, unlike calc.exe's replacement.

clavicat 5y ago

There is something pathologically dysfunctional about a trillion-dollar organization that thinks a few imperceptible improvements to decades-old programs that individual programmers have created far superior versions of for free are worth announcing like it’s a marvel of engineering. We saw the same thing with Windows Terminal—they even made a trailer for it. Like, these are the kinds of updates that would take one person a weekend to accomplish. Nor would that individual think to brag about implementing rounded corners. But the bureaucracy inside Microsoft is so sclerotic and hostile to excellence that even these changes require heroic allocations of effort.

native_samples 5y ago
Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is that they have a marketing problem: everyone knows that Windows has ignored the basics for decades in favor of all kinds of random crap like rewriting their web browser 3 or 4 times, putting adverts in the start menu and so on. But the foundational stuff an operating system is expected to do, like open text files or provide a calculator or a working terminal app, has been rotting away unloved and unowned. So now they're finally (!) fixing some of these issues. They have a terminal that isn't a total embarrassment now. OK it's slow but at least the features are there. They are upgrade Notepad. They upgraded the Calculator. These projects are revealing weaknesses in their new round of Windows APIs but fine, whatever, at least they're dogfooding stuff now and it's not like the original Windows APIs smelled of roses either. As a result, yes, they seem to be making a big deal about stupidly small stuff. But, whatever. I can forgive them for that. They all do it: GNOME makes fancy marketing material for changing icon themes or adding a dark mode to their settings app or whatever, Apple promote lots of trivial stuff as well. It's still better than the status quo of Windows development for the last 20 years.

Mk2000 5y ago

It still doesn't have half of Kate's (Plasma's default editor) functionalities. The only addition seems to be the dark mode, which is very opinionated and unchangeable

karpovv-boris 5y ago
It's controversial, for quick/temp notes Notepad works perfectly. In my opinion it does not need to have a lot of features.

AHTERIX5000 5y ago

I just hope the new version is fast and not like Paint 3D which sometimes spends multiple seconds "creating a new project" when opening a simple PNG on a 5950X.

vq 5y ago

"Productivity, performance, and reliability are paramount in Notepad. Regardless of how you incorporate Notepad into your workflows, we will ensure that Notepad continues to excel in those areas." Is this from Microsoft? Is this real?

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I don't know why you are being downvoted. I used to use Notepad years ago as it's practically guaranteed to exist on every Windows machine. I can't say much about productivity, but performance was abysmal for larger files. As for reliability, the main reason I never use Notepad now, even for most trivial things, is that Notepad++ will always bring my session back, with all open tabs, regardless of whether I saved the file or not. It doesn't matter if my battery died or Windows decided it's now time to restart the system after updating - Notepad++ will keep my work safe and Notepad will not. So speaking about reliability is probably a bigger joke than productivity. They could say "We always wanted to keep the tool light, fast to start and reasonably efficient for small files, and we have managed to do that" - and this would be OK. There is no need to serve bullshit to a technical community.
- vq 5y ago
  I'm sure the editor is fine for a basic editor that comes with the desktop environment, it looks functional enough, but the language in that article is just weird to me. It reads like some kind of prank.
  - orloffm 5y ago
    It's a "you probably never worked in a corporation" type of thing. Someone is trained to write things like this, and it's impossible for that person to do it differently, plus no one is in a position/capacity/incentive to affect that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

lucb1e 5y ago

I was expecting a ribbon or other fluff (like write.exe / WordPad), perhaps even ads (two days ago I saw at a friend's that a Windows built-in game now has ads). Honestly I'm very impressed they kept the simple look. It's just a larger-than-necessary menu bar and some unobtrusive theming and that's it. The toggleable dark mode is also a welcome change for me. I do assume we can open files larger than a few megabytes now and there were some more functionality issues that seemed very 90s, could it be that there was only one undo step or did they already fix that in a previous release? I truly haven't used Windows in, dare I say, too long. Edit: yes I did remember the undo problem correctly and that's finally fixed: "adding support for multi-level undo".

agumonkey 5y ago

"with a lot of effort, Microsoft succeeded in adding undo" not 1987

melony 5y ago
If they replace the current high performance codebase inherited from the previous system with a much slower UI people will complain. Not to mention changes in bugs and behavior.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  heh that is true. Even though I suspect notepad.exe to be so naive there's no performance, it's just a visual mmap

melony 5y ago

They should just open source the consumer level userland apps and outsource the dev work to third party contributors. It would save quite a bit of money.

okareaman 5y ago

The greatest thing about Notepad is that it runs and displays a blinking cursor ready for typing in much less than a second for a new document. On my Windows 11 machine it appears to be around 200 msec. I've tried setting my text file handler to other text editors but nothing else comes close to this speed of utility. I'm very glad they are not messing with that. Overall, I'm very pleased with my Windows 11. Everything is just slightly, but enough, better to make it a good upgrade. That said, I read somewhere that Microsoft intends it to be mostly for new computers. It's not a big loss for a Windows 10 user to stay on 10. It's more of a nicety to upgrade. It's better looking but functionally not much different afaik

kayodelycaon 5y ago
TextEdit on macOS is this fast when set to plain text and not reopening previous windows. The entire app is 2.6mb. Launching with rich text as the default is a bit slower. But hey, rich text.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Sublime Text, god bless its soul, is right there with it. And TextEdit is less than half that size if you strip out the translation dicts!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    Sublime Text wasn’t as fast to launch on my 12” MacBook (RIP), which is why didn’t mention it. TextEdit still pretty much instant. On my intel 16”, Sublime Text 4 is amazingly fast, even with a dozen medium-to-large rails apps open.
- perryizgr8 5y ago
  > TextEdit on macOS is this fast when set to plain text Not for me. Opening textedit on macbook 13, with plaintext mode takes noticeable time to animate the window before I can start typing. Opening notepad.exe on Win11 is instant. The window is on-screen and ready to take input, before my finger has lifted off the enter key. Not to mention the silly bugs and lack of attention to detail. Open a new file. Don't type anything, it will prompt you to save the file on close. Why?

twirlock 5y ago

So a bunch of shit an amateur dev could have implemented in like half a day.

CivBase 5y ago

Here's a few features I'd like to see for Notepad which I don't think would compromise its performance or minimalist design: - multi-cursor support - tab to indent selection - encoding selection - fully controllable with hotkeys - [optional] line numbers - [optional] visible whitespace characters - [optional] column ruler - [optional] spaces instead of tabs - [optional] unix-style line breaks

jussij 5y ago

Does this mean Microsoft have re-written Notepad to use something like Electron? As the original Notepad was written in Win32 app, doesn't that also signed the death sentence for Win32 on Windows?