Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Notepad++ v8 release

notepad-plus-plus.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 167 posts

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#91

Post by BeFlatXIII »

oblio wrote: post #80
arsome wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is now a bloated Electron app where all the features have been deleted. Try comparing Spotify to Amarok/Foobar/Clementine. Even Firefox seems to just keep stripping out useful functionality for power users for some bizarre reason, no more full themes, limited extension APIs, poor UI customization and less advanced features like "view image", it's like they're trying to alienate their most dedicated fanbase…

> where all the features have been deleted We're never going to go back to the old days. Back then desktop computing was 100% of end user computing and everyone assumed all users end up as power users. Now desktop computing is ~30% of end user computing and shrinking and we realize that most people have absolutely no desire to become power users. It's not that they can't, they don't want to (think other interests, an…

Then what software is there for us who do wish to be power users? If it gets eliminated through atrophy, that is yet another example of market failure.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#92

Post by the_third_wave »

radmuzom wrote: post #72
pulse7 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in 90s there was a well defined menubar with all functions. Today you don't know where the functions are hidden - they may be everywhere on the screen, hidden behind visible or even unvisible graphical elements... This may be frustrating...

Agreed. Joel Spolsky covered it in the article - https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/12/03/talk-at-yale-part-... Quote from the article - "The old testers at Microsoft checked lots of things: they checked if fonts were consistent and legible, they checked that the location of controls on dialog boxes was reasonable and neatly aligned, they checked whether the screen flickered when you did things, they looked at how t…

Is this the same old it compiles, ship it! Microsoft Spolsky talks about? I remember them in a totally different way, as a company which used paying customers as beta testers, where no single application used the same design language, where spurious windows with indecipherable error messages popped up randomly... in other words something close to the antithesis of what is written above. Part of this comes from Microsoft's focus on backwards compatibility which makes it possible for them to keep older parts around - just click through a few controls in Windows 10 to end up in something which looks like it started off in the Windows 3.x period - but another reason is probably the rivalry between different groups within Microsoft which want to push their own products based on their own toolkits.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#93

Post by BeFlatXIII »

account-5 wrote: post #27
Aerroon wrote: post #18

One thing I wish Notepad++ could do is to create a table document instead of the regular text document. Kind of like excel. It doesn't have to have any fancy formulas or anything like that, simply a grid with writeable cells. I love how lightweight it is and I like collecting notes in it. Data is better in a table rather than a text document though. I haven't checked recently whether such a thing might exist, but las…

Sounds like you would like TreeSheets. http://strlen.com/treesheets/

Just the screenshots on the home page have me curious. I’ll have to poke around with this after work today. Thank you for sharing the link.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#94

Post by hyperman1 »

Zarel wrote: post #86
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar thought reading that comment: "Outdated? You mean because it is lightweight, responsive, and native?"

I mean, you don't have to be uncharitable, the UI can be lightweight, responsive, and fast, but they're most likely talking about the usability aspects. The "huge row of inscrutable icons" school of design fell out of favor for good reason – while a few icons (like "Back" or "Close") can be immediately recognizable, when you get to that many, most of them are icons people haven't seen before, and people end up mostly…

I'm now looking at that bar of icons. It fills about half of my horizontal width, so there is plenty of place for more. The first 20 are the usual suspects. The last 10 I don't care about, half of them has to do with macros.

Hunting for them is no problem, after a few hours your muscle memory takes over. In fact, now I look at it, I like how this small amount of color provides a bit of recognizability and identity to the application as a whole.

All of this is tiny compared with just about any other application. Vertical pixel size is small. Horizontal size has plenty left over for more icons. You might have a point when talking about ms office around 2000, but not notepad++

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#95

Post by nindalf »

matsemann wrote: post #88
ghosty141 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are generalizing too much. Spotify has to cover way more than just playback etc., it's a streaming service, the client is only a small part. As a whole Spotify includes way more functionality than winamp, they have completely different goals though. Winamp is a player, Spotify is a service. Nobody would use Spotify as a pure music client, you can't really compare them.

That's kinda the point they're trying to make, though: That we had simple stuff that worked fine, now we have complex stuff that often don't.

Worked fine for who? I enjoy Spotify so much more than the good ol' days of foobar2000 and then like.

- I can play any song or podcast that I want without ordering a CD (that I couldn't afford as a kid) or opening up a torrent client.

- Curation is taken care of. Every song I've ever "liked" or added to a playlist is available on any of my devices, without me having to worry about syncing.

- I can discover music similar to an artist or song with Song Radio. I have curated playlists created for me based on my tastes (Discover Weekly).

- I can cast to any other device, like a Sound bar.

- I can run this application on Mac, Linux and Windows and it works without a hitch on all 3. I remember back when native applications simply didn't appear on Linux. Skype was the dominant video calling service and it simply didn't work on Linux. Now you can choose the OS that you want knowing that all software will work, without mucking around with Wine.

There's two kinds of people - those that pretend that Spotify and others don't have any new features compared to Winamp 5.0. The second kind pretend that these features are useless or no one wants them. Nope, I like the status quo just fine. So do tens of millions of others.

All of that software is still available. Download Winamp (https://www.winamp.com) or whatever other "lightweight" players you want. Fact is, people voted with their wallets and they went with the streaming services that use electron for their clients.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#96

Post by meibo »

nebulous1 wrote: post #64
chrisan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but something is either up with your computer or the excel sheet you are currently using would be infinitely slower on that old 2005 machine. I've been using computers since Apple IIe and am much happier with things today than versions of the past. There are certainly hiccups along the way, but no way am I going to trade what I have today for what I used in 80s/90s.

I still haven't got over the ribbon. That said I don't use MS office so I haven't spent time trying to get used to it, just when I'm helping somebody out

The ribbon was radical, but they've refined it into something that's genuinely nice to use.

You can customize every section and it's very easy to pick up, I'm sure if you'd have to spend some time with office nowadays you'd agree. I'd take them over old-style nondescript toolbars by now.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#97

Post by xbar »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #78
Jonnax wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify is a music streaming service. These other apps are for curating your own audio files. Also what does "bloated election app" mean? Because it seems like it's just a meme at this point. I'm using the desktop app right now. It's using 160mb of ram and it's very responsive. Teams is just a bad application. A lot of shitty "enterprise" software is written in Java. If I started saying Java = Bad software. I'm sure…

> Spotify is a music streaming service. I don't understand this objection. Every time people say "software is slow today: compare Spotify to Winamp/Xmms", the objectiion is that Spotify isn't Xmms, it's a music streaming service. But so what? Why can't a music streaming service be fast to start up? It's already a thick client. My life isn't going to end if I can start playing music within milliseconds but the playlis…

You are right. The ways in which it is terrible are obvious, but they have not been fixed. That suggests architectural or legal problems (likely in some song data/song license sync and prefetch model).

Spotify isn't really a song player. It is a song license management system with arbitrary playlists referencing song data whose licensing may change.

You want to access the same data under the same license. Spotify isn't sure the license hasn't changed since it last started streaming to you.

The misery of such a system is exacerbated by buggy client software.

Maybe if the Spotify API was more like the Stripe of music licensing systems, you'd sideload your own client.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#98

Post by datavirtue »

oblio wrote: post #80
arsome wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is now a bloated Electron app where all the features have been deleted. Try comparing Spotify to Amarok/Foobar/Clementine. Even Firefox seems to just keep stripping out useful functionality for power users for some bizarre reason, no more full themes, limited extension APIs, poor UI customization and less advanced features like "view image", it's like they're trying to alienate their most dedicated fanbase…

> where all the features have been deleted We're never going to go back to the old days. Back then desktop computing was 100% of end user computing and everyone assumed all users end up as power users. Now desktop computing is ~30% of end user computing and shrinking and we realize that most people have absolutely no desire to become power users. It's not that they can't, they don't want to (think other interests, an…

The future is clearly cross platform where you meet the customer where they are...mobile, desktop, web. Maybe the application morphs a bit by including or excluding features for various platforms but there is no way to proclaim that there is one platform you can focus on to the exclusion of others in a general sense.

If I'm writing serious business software the web and desktop are king and quickly becoming synonymous given technologies like xamarin forms, ionic, and electron. I'm building an app in ionic using html/css/JavaScript (angular) that is primarily for desktop (electron) but will deploy to mobile and web, allowing me to meet people where and how they want to work.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#99

Post by xbar »

Dort wrote: post #56
radmuzom wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can give you one to illustrate the point I am trying to make. When I first started working in 2005, we used to use Excel 2003. My first company gave me a modest desktop with 512MB RAM and old processor. Right clicking on a cell to format it, change font, etc. used to take few milliseconds at most and the window used to appear immediately after the click. Today I have a 16GB machine at work - doing the same operatio…

I assume you are not using Excel 2003 on your 16GB machine. May I ask which version of MS Office you are using? If I have to believe this[1] thread, then Office 365 is now an Electron app, which would explain the slowness. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17300893

I most live on Macs. But for big spreadsheets, my Microsoft Excel 2010 on a modern Windows PC is blazing fast to open, load, operate and calculate. Sub-400ms and 8.4MB RAM to launch.

Sadly, support ended October of 2020, so it's time to find something else before too long. It is not going to be contemporary Office.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#100

Post by nix23 »

yoz-y wrote: post #70
Nerwesta wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn Amarok is so good, the Windows app pale in comparison to this. I had a blast while I first installed my Kubuntu machine.

Amarok 1.4 was so good that I switched to linux for it, even bought a t-shirt. Amarok 2 was what made me leave. I've toyed a bit with quodlibet and clementine, but for me 1.4 was the peak music player.

>Amarok

It was so good that it was the first project i gave some money, then they killed the database connection...i was pretty angry at them, never used it since then.

Post reply on HN