Who gives a flying fark what they've done with Notepad, unless they've also crippled NP++ to force people to use their own crock of putrid festering rectal emissions?
The inevitability of the Windows 11 UI: New Notepad enters the beta channel
It is with a heavy heart we report that Microsoft's redesigned Notepad has begun to make its way to the Windows Insider Beta channel, taking one step closer to end users already reeling from the Windows 11 experience. The makeover was released a month ago for Dev Channel users with the news that no corner of Windows 11 would …
COMMENTS
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Monday 10th January 2022 00:44 GMT martinusher
>For 64-bit...
I'm either a bit thick or just old and behind the times but I don't see why you need to update all the software on an Intel processor (especially) if you're using 64 bit addressing. The only way I can see this rationale is if the system ignores the segmentation model and just puts everything, code, data and stack, into one large segment. Which, given the origins of a lot of the system code and the overhead of managing segments might be the case.
Can anyone enlighten me?
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Thursday 6th January 2022 19:17 GMT bombastic bob
decades ago MS had a version of notepad that I think was called "multipad" which was basically an MDI notepad that was part of the windows 3 SDK as an example program. As I recall, it simply uses the built-in EDIT control with some other basic features like file save/open, clipboard, and searching.
If anything were to replace it, i suggest pluma (the editor for Mate based on gedit 2.x)
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Thursday 6th January 2022 18:47 GMT MrTuK
Re: Last decent version of Windows was
I switched after testing Win 10 for 3 months when it first came out, for some reason I could foresee the future of MS Windows, they want your data, they want total control over the Windows ECO now rather than back in Win 95 days mind you there was SFA else to go to if they had done it then so they would have had everyone by the short and curly's !! Win 7 Pro was the best but now its POP-OS with Cinnamon UI for the Win 7 look and feel, and oh wow Windows games work in Steam :) at least the one's I play EVEonline :)
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Thursday 6th January 2022 19:07 GMT Dave K
Re: Last decent version of Windows was
Still on Windows 7 on my main PC here (typing this from the very machine). A quick ESU hack and the security updates continue to flow, all programs I want to use still work and receive updates, and it looks a shit-load better than Windows 10 and supports a lot more customisability and flexibility than Windows 11.
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Friday 7th January 2022 15:21 GMT DoctorPaul
Re: Last decent version of Windows was
Ah so we are allowed to mention BypassESU here, I had begun to wonder :-)
Mind you, Office 2010 refuses to activate any more - is that legal? I paid for the software, a HDD crash meant a fresh install, now I can't use what I paid for. Still there's always that Office 2000 CD knocking about somewhere.
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Friday 7th January 2022 23:42 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Fingerprints
Well you should be using a sans font, they are easier to read. Also, don't fall into the awful trap of thinking a magazine page can be reproduced on the screen, and use a lighter weight, so the text appears more grey than black. The number of times I have to press F12 then remove the offending CSS rule(s) just to make it easier on the eyes to read something.
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Tuesday 11th January 2022 21:31 GMT Swarthy
Re: Fingerprints
I like sans fonts, and in general they are easier to read. But for getting what the actual characters are, you can't beat a properly serifed font. Having to copy a bit of text to Notepad set to TNR to find out whether that important value-specific sting contains a 1, l, or I is a bit of a faff.
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Friday 7th January 2022 08:45 GMT Jakester
Test EOL Characters
Years ago when I was doing simple programs with Microsoft's macro assembler with DOS 3 through DOS 5, I would have about 1 in 10 lines just ignored. Looking at the text file in Debug, I found that those lines ended with the hex character 0D instead of hex 0D 0A. Since Microsoft is designing Notepad from the ground up, who knows what crap is going to end up hidden in the file? Run tests before using it for important projects when it is released.
Currently not a problem for me, I quit any assembler programming after Win 95 was released - there were just too many APIs to try to keep track of.
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Friday 7th January 2022 10:19 GMT thondwe
Another Work Experience Placement
Assuming another Work Experience bod is give Notepad to enhance?
Pretty much everyone replaces it with NP++ or Visual Studio Code - so why bother, some with half the other "apps in the box" - wasting effort - Weather app, News App - sorry I've got a phone/tablet/web site for all that... FOCUS on the OS guys!
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Friday 7th January 2022 12:58 GMT Scott Pedigo
For Me, Windows 10 Jumped the Shark When...
I started getting notifications offering to show me highlights of stuff that got backed up to One Drive during the last year. I presume photos and screenshots. As if my Documents folder, which is being automatically backed up to One Drive, were some kind of social media. Say what?
I find it mildly annoying when even Facebook offers to show me the highlights from my own year's posts, but I can just tell it not to show me those offers and it stops for awhile. I positively hate the feature that offers you to re-share old posts from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 years ago, because one of my relatives uses it and I find my feed regularly filled up with dozens of old posts that I have no interest in re-reading. Like photos from one of their vacations 7 years ago. If I were interested in some past occurrence, I could go to their page and look through their photos.
But the OS getting in on the act? Gimme a break.
If you're wondering why I'd turn on the automatic backup to One Drive, it's because for the first 6 months to a year after I got a new HP laptop, every Windows 10 update (which you can only postpone, not skip) would break the NVidia graphics driver and require me to reinstall the original OS version from the emergency restore partition and reinstall all my apps. Nothing else worked, not manually replacing the driver, not going back to a Restore Point, nothing. You get tired of reinstalling all your apps every month or so, and having to manually save and restore all your data every time as well.
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Friday 7th January 2022 13:28 GMT Smirnov
Re: I started getting notifications offering to show me highlights of stuff
It's not just OneDrive, a lot of programs have started to intrude with all kinds of meaningless and often rather annoying notifications that want me strangulate the program's developer.
The worst ones are those messages that only have a "Not now" button which means they will come back at another, equally inconvenient time.
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Friday 7th January 2022 19:04 GMT Not also known as SC
Re: Is it going to end up like windows 8?
Well I 'upgraded' to Windows 11 over Christmas and hated it so much I started running Linux Mint off a USB stick, planning on dual booting once I got around to it. Luckily I then discovered the 10 day grace period where you can regress back to Windows 10 and keep your data. Currently I'm on Win 10 until I get around to setting up the dual boot.
So life changing experience - discovering how much worse a Windows OS can be.
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Tuesday 11th January 2022 21:39 GMT Swarthy
Re: Is it going to end up like windows 8?
I got a new Laptop with Win 11 as a Xmas Pressie to myself (I was planning to immediately nuke the OS and move to Mint). I paused for a bit to see if 11 was as bad as I feared - It was worse.
I called my son over to get his impressions. His computer has been asking to upgrade to 11, so I wanted to let him see what was in store. A few minutes looking at it, he decided that his next OS upgrade will also be to Mint.
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Saturday 8th January 2022 13:17 GMT Andy A
Re: Is it going to end up like windows 8?
> What life changing features will I be getting by switching to W11?
... A huge amount of frustration as you discover that most of those features you rely on have been taken away because the "design" numpties think they are "too complicated for users to understand".
... Advertising pushed at you whether you like it or not. There's a reason that half the Start Menu is labelled "Suggestions". That will be filled by ads as soon as they can lure enough advertisers away from Google.
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Sunday 9th January 2022 18:38 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Is it going to end up like windows 8?
Advertising pushed at you whether you like it or not.
Manchester City Council have found a way to impose the equivalent in a physical sense, by blocking the pavements...
I wonder with that level of electricity consumption if those advertising screens are also mining cryptocurrencies
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Saturday 8th January 2022 11:32 GMT Grunchy
I’m not ‘upgrading’ anymore. I’m weary of the endless ‘change for the sake of change.’ I use a computer for specific work and it already does that competently. I just picked up a 2nd hand DL380P (gen 8) because they’re practically giving them away, and that 2012-era hardware would probably be woefully overloaded by modern Microsoft bloatware. Besides, I will probably load it with Linux instead because there’s absolutely no way I’m ever paying a nickle to Microsoft for their ‘dog’s breakfast’ product they have for offer.
Notepad++ is a not bad alternative product, but you know what’s even more useful? Notetab.
(If you ever run ‘Notes’ on iPhone IOS, it seems like they borrowed heavily from Notetab, perhaps it is just a very sincere form of flattery?)
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Sunday 9th January 2022 18:18 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Re: Wndows? Never heard of it! What is it?
Windows - a very old invention...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InZ6Ylc68uM
...about 2 mins in
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Sunday 9th January 2022 10:47 GMT Fruit and Nutcase
Vertical Scrollbar
May be they will get rid of the vertical scrollbar all together to satisfy the trend to remove essential screen navigation tools - given that by default these days it gets relegated to a thin vertical line which you have to finely place the pointer over to get it to appear - just kills productivity.
This annoying feature can be turned off using the... "Ease of Access" settings! So, Microsoft are well aware that this feature is a hindrance.
Make it the default to see all these essential things, and allow the OCD types to turn them off as they please/have a different theme that does exactly that.
https://www.bruceb.com/2020/04/windows-tip-how-to-stop-the-disappearing-scroll-bar/
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Sunday 9th January 2022 16:10 GMT Shred
Re: Vertical Scrollbar
Thank you! You’ve just given me a way to fix a major irritation with modern Windows.
Every new version, I have to spend hours and hours turning off all the new shiny “change for the sake of change” “features” and get back to where I was before I was forced to upgrade.
It amazes me that we put up with this. I recently saw a video explaining why people pay big $$$ for a certain brand of electronics test gear. Partly, it is because large organisations want to buy (say) a multimeter, then specify it as standard equipment and write all their test and repair documentation around that device. They need something that is guaranteed to be in production for 20 years or more, because it just costs too much to keep updating.
When will the computer industry mature to this point? The OS should be invisible to the user. Pretty up the user interface if the user wants.., or let them keep the same one for decades.
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Sunday 9th January 2022 21:13 GMT marknzl
Bugs -> Dark Mode
I've only just resigned myself to Win 10 bugs and other annoyances being being referred to as "Features". Are Microsoft now calling them "Dark Mode" in Win 11? Are Microsoft going to pile even more crap and workarounds onto us, and then suggest we let go and embrace the Dark Side?
Also.... who the hell has their taskbar on the bottom (or top) of a landscape oriented monitor?!?!?!
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Monday 10th January 2022 10:46 GMT that one in the corner
Re: Bugs -> Dark Mode
It always got our IT guy wound up, for some reason, but I find the best taskbar is on the left (the rhs would also work, for those with the mouse in their right hand), wide enough to fit 20 or more characters and with autohide.
All the screen space available for serious work. When it is time to change your focus, one quick flick of wrist and you get a column of window titles large enough to actually read.
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