Beloved pixel pusher Paint prepares to join Notepad for updates from Microsoft Store Microsoft Paint has followed its long-lived chum Notepad into the howling wilderness of the Microsoft Store. It has been a while coming, but last night's Dev Channel Insider build of Windows 10 (21354) has made the MSPaint app updateable via the Microsoft Store. The change, which was accompanied by a whizzy new icon for the …
Last time I tried to watch a DVD it was the child's nativity, it wouldn't work on the PS4 DVD player so I ripped it on the mac and fired it onto my phone and VNC chromecast to the TV.
I do sometimes feel that in some ways laptops from the early 2000s had more usable functionality.
Actually, windows dedia player is still free, it just doesn't have a DVD playback feature. As others have mentioned, VLC media player is far better anyways and I would use it even if windows media player had DVD playback capabilities. I've been using VLC for many years - highly recommended..
Microsoft must realize that MS Paint has never been so bad. Can we just go back to the Windows XP version and they can fsck off with their updates?
What "features" have they added? Seriously.
You now need to toggle between the two colours using a clunky interface rather than right / left clicking. This is such bad usability for a tool that really would take a competent developer less than a month to write from scratch.
Jeez we need a proper desktop operating system to come out. And fast!
Well, I'm glad you're content with the basic shovel of the pixel realm. I guess you don't need to create/retouch images all that much.
As for me, I've been using Paint.net for over a decade, and before that I was using Paint Shop Pro.
Microsoft Paint is the kindergerden tool, as far as I'm concerned.
And let's not talk about Notepad. Notepad++ is the only text editor you'll ever need, and Microsoft's offering doesn't hold a candle to it.
Yes, but that has to be installed. MS-Paint is (was) available on every damn Windows system with a desktop. Therefore while basic it did the basics of what was needed for a screenshot and often given idiotic non-copy and pasteable error message dialogs this is just what is necessary.
I remember a time when a WordStar compatible editor was available as part of a tsr with a calculator, ASCII table and a couple of other useful features and operated well within the 640k on my pc, along with a compiler and linker. No swapping and a massive 32mbyyte hard drive
I find MSPaint really useful. If I want to wack some text on a screen shot, it is far easier to do with Paint than GIMP, or Adobe suite, both of which I have on my work box.
Notepad has its place too, as a scratch pad.
Sometimes you just don't need all the bells and whistles.
> Notepad++ is the only text editor you'll ever need, and Microsoft's offering doesn't hold a candle to it.
You mis-spelled Vim ;)
> Well, I'm glad you're content with the basic shovel of the pixel realm. I guess you don't need to create/retouch images all that much.
While I don't use Paint, I do a fair amount of image hackery (far more so while in lockdown!), and it's become far more of a pain to find applications which do "pixel-pushing", as opposed to "photo touchup".
Originally, I was happy with PSP5, but it's not particularly stable - not entirely surprising, when you consider it was released in 1998!
So I grudgingly came to the conclusion that I should probably try to shift to something which was at least patched in the last decade.
Alas, as per above, Paint Shop Pro's ongoing move to be more like Photo Shop has pretty much ruined it for me. With PSP9, I found I couldn't do basic things like drawing an outlined box, with X4, they moved to a "tabbed" view where you can only see one image at a time, which is a pain when you're taking elements from multiple images to produce a composite.
For now, I've ended up using Irfanview for basic cropping, resizing and colour tweaking, and have stuck with PSP9 for most of my actual editing needs, even though as per above, it's lost some of it's pixel-pushing capabilities, so I occasionally fire PSP5 back up.
And even PSP9 was released back in 2004!
So, yeah. I know I should probably try and shift to something more modern and retrain myself. But if it ain't broke (or conversely, old dogs/new tricks) and all that...
> Vim is the Linux worlds crock. I use gedit, or vi, both easier and don't cover half the screen estate with crus.
Eh? As far as I know, pretty much all "vi" installs these days are just aliases to vim. And Vi is essentially just Vim with fewer features (e.g. the ability to move between lines when in edit mode)
Gvim does come with a UI for use in Windows and the like, but it's no more cluttered than any other text editor.
Personally, I use Vim from within a terminal window - and often on a remote server via SSH. Good luck using Gedit for the latter case :)
> Maybe one day we will get useful programs like dump, debug, edlin back, it would be nice because they worked and worked well
I haven't checked, but I'm fairly sure they're either already installed by default or just an apt-get away...
> Eh, haven't you got that backwards? Vim is "vi improved", vi is not a stripped down vim.
The two statements aren't mutually exclusive :)
As far as I know, Vim offers full backwards compatibility with Vi. So you can view Vi as having fewer features than Vim, or Vim having more features than Vi.
Either way, it's still the One True Editor...
Notepad++ is bigger and spends time loadingall the files i had been editing before, good sometimes but occasionally i just need a quick place to paste something I am hacking around with. As for kindergarden pair, it is sometimes all i actually need, i don't need to fill, cor many other fancy gizmos. If I want something fancy i will get it. It's a bit like saying i can have a rolls Royce when actually I just need a push bike
So is it still included with win 10 by default, or is it something you now have to download separately? It is by far the easiest and quickest way to save a grabbed screenshot and give it a quick crop. I don't particularly care if it is updated - i just want something ubiquitous to be there on all systems.
Sometimes it does seem MS are determined to make Win10 less functional every day.
I used to be the same, but shift+windows flag key+s to grab a screenshot of your desired cropping is now easier (as it's auto loaded in to your clipboard ready for pasting).
Though, I still tend to use alt+printscreen to just get the application window a lot more..
What I'm really confused about is, what updates?
and the shift+windows flag key+s seems to work better capturing pop-up messages and drop-down lists. Using windows flag key+V gives the ability to do seerl captures than paste them where/when you want.
But must admit that familiarity means that I still use Paint for quick edits of existing images.
I still prefer Snipping tool for grabbing quick and specific grabs of the screen. The keyboard shortcut for S&S is handy, but otherwise I find the tool slower, less user friendly, and it lacks the ability to send the snip directly into an Outlook e-mail (either in-body or as an attachment) whereas Snipping tool can do this.
If a program is available both in the MS store or from its makers website, it's the website every time.
Most recent example: iTunes.
If anyone know a simple way to inspect the installation folder of an MS store installed app, pray tell.
I was unable to access said folder so unable to prove if the previous uninstall had fully worked.
Microsoft - Progressively making Windows a bit more difficult to use all the time - particularly for people that have to fix things..
Forced updates
Forced updates that break basic functionality - because who needs testing ???
Turning off safe mode (F8) by default in Win10 requiring that you try and break things with multiple hard power offs in an already broken OS.
The Ribbon, and now the minimising ribbon that hides stuff.
Removing basic features in attempts to push other things that nobody wants (i.e. the store)
Keep going Microsoft, you are just going to alienate your user base bit by bit.
You are supposed to make it easier to use and more powerful - for those that want to use the product, not keep on finding ways to make it more difficult and convoluted to do things.
I used to work for them on mobile devices, I long back stopped using them for my personal machines (though customers often supply me one). To be honest all of my team in my current contract have ditched windows in favour of either apple or Linux. More reliable and quicker
Which is more than can be said for the crap shipped with windows 10 not to mention the utter pile of crud i am not even allowed to delete.... Does anyone know what the hell groove music is or why a late 50s guy would want such a piece of shite occupying space on his laptop and wasting valuable cycles to process?
If you are serious in wanting to delete crud from your machine there are plenty of choices available via your favourite search engine.
IOBitUninstaller allows quite specific uninstalls of windows components and there is/are a plethora of package uninstallers that remove crud such as cortana, internet explorer, x-boxstuff, your favourite media handler and more.
Something like OOSU10 (O & O Shutup10) will prevent much of it from loading but other stuff actually uninstalls individual packages.
Manual's in the big interwebtubes jacket pocket.
I keep a copy of the old Paint, Notepad, and Wordpad from Win2003 handy and put them on most of my new servers. It's just easier that way. The bummer is that MS puts one of them (Wordpad, maybe?) in a protected directory, so it's a small pain to replace it with the older version so that calling tit from the command line (or the Run box) brings up the old version instead of the new crap.
I use notepad++ for those times when I need to open files that will give notepad fits (Unix format files, or partly binary files), and sometimes use Paint.NET when I need to do layers (ie - generating floorplans for Ekahau wireless surveys). But 99% of the time, I'm using Paint, Notepad, and Irfanview for day-to-day stuff.
Yes, I am a simpleton.
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