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Notepad++ v8 release

notepad-plus-plus.org

111–120 of 167 posts

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#111
post #75

"39. Remove Microsoft Bing from Notepad++ for Search on Internet command, due to its poor reliability." That's in response to the tankman problem btw. They now redirect people who have used Bing so far to DuckDuckGo. I am not sure what I should think of this. On one hand, it is understandable, on the other hand it shows disregard for the choice of their users. I would have understood if they had simply removed it fro…

Notepad++ author is using his software to push his political agenda. Although I dislike it, that's his right. If you dislike it too, there are less politicized alternatives, like PSPad. Just look at his blog https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/ lots of anti-mainland China comments as well as references to "Gilets Jaunes" (a protest movement in France), reaction to Islamic terrorism,... At some point he told that peopl…

There was one update a couple years ago that after the first time it ran, it opened a new document tab, and started typing a political message (I think it was about Snowden leaks/privacy).

Watching a document open and someone seemingly remotely type in the window made me very very uncomfortable. I agree it is his right, and I even agreed with the message, but it completely discredits the tool and the developer.

I have no idea what the developer's politics will be tomorrow, whether he'll see me, or Americans, or guys like me, or whatever "category", as an opponent, and maybe he'll get emotional and somehow nerf the software to punish his perceived political opponents. It's juvenile and destroys trust. It's indicative of someone who simply cannot create boundaries in his life, and worries me that he won't respect other boundaries.

Politics are transient. Tools should be forever.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#112
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…

The real question is why does a service require a specific program to use it.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably the reason. It was Bing’s decision to filter the searches, DDG was just the effect of this. The author of notepad++ has a history of activism against CCP.

Good. We have got to band together against authoritarianism.

He's against a lot of things - not just authoritarianism.

Are you confident you'll remain on the "good side" of his politics forever?

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#115
post #87
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…

Electron is Flash for the Desktop. https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/ While I don't appreciate most of Apples business strategies, I have to admit that Steve Jobs was right about banning Flash. It was eating the battery runtime of MacBooks. And Steve Jobs would have banned[1] Electron probably already years ago, because it is consuming so much memory. But especially so many big tech companies…

I would much rather have a native (and M1 ready) client for Teams and Discord than the Electron apps. Electron is good for end users via Nativefier, though. I can pop together a sandboxed app, invokable like any other program on my computer, for work-related sites that I want absolutely segregated from my daily browsing habits (and thus political, religious, and personal opinions).

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#116
post #75

"39. Remove Microsoft Bing from Notepad++ for Search on Internet command, due to its poor reliability." That's in response to the tankman problem btw. They now redirect people who have used Bing so far to DuckDuckGo. I am not sure what I should think of this. On one hand, it is understandable, on the other hand it shows disregard for the choice of their users. I would have understood if they had simply removed it fro…

Notepad++ author is using his software to push his political agenda. Although I dislike it, that's his right. If you dislike it too, there are less politicized alternatives, like PSPad. Just look at his blog https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/ lots of anti-mainland China comments as well as references to "Gilets Jaunes" (a protest movement in France), reaction to Islamic terrorism,... At some point he told that peopl…

An electron app, Visual Studio Code, is displacing notepad++. I was an avid notepad++ user for years but now I just use VS Code because it's easier/faster and more familiar since I use it for most other development.

Cross platform ability just clinches it.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#117
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

I don't know if this will help you get over the ribbon. I turn it on in LibreOffice. But tools that are stable and predictable are extremely important to user empowerment and the ribbon dates to about the same timeas artists who care nothing about user empowerment became an important part of software design, and outsted usability engineers, for whom the experience of experts was also one of the matters to consider.

To me the ribbon was almost peak UI. It's tainted because it was introduced around the same time that designers started winning the "user friendly" vs "looks pretty" battle, but the ribbon is definitely from the "user friendly" side. They provide large targets, they have icons and text to help remember them better, the button size varies according to relative likelihood, some menu is always open instead of closing as soon as you start doing something. The ribbon was a genuine attempt at giving all users access to a powerful piece of software: a tool to upgrade the mental model of users instead of reaching for the lowest common denominator.

The biggest limitation of them seems to be that they don't help teach people the shortcut keys. To me that's not important because I'm never going to use them, but others like them, and by hiding them they've gone from seeming like a utility for experienced users to being a secret for hackers that could be removed at any time.

But they seem like a genuine improvement in contrast to the old system of either text-or-icons, absence of meaningful hierarchy, menus that are hard to study because as soon as you interact with them they disappear, or the new system of gratuitously hidden options, secret buttons, and apps which prioritise branding and a sense of eternal instability and change over predictability and approachability.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#118
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…

> a consistent user interface is easier to use than an inconsistent one

I have never seen a Microsoft product with a consistent UI, though…

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#119

Instead of wishing or tell them what they should or shouldn't do, I would like to thank all the people behind Notepad++ for consistently making and maintaining an awesome piece of software and product for more than 15 years for FREE.

I've become a lot more accustomed to paying for software - often after using the free version. My biggest emotional aversion to paying for software remains paying for something that I ultimately never use.

I'm also extremely hesitant to subscribe to anything. Those often come with emotional regret when I realize I haven't been using it and my CC has just been getting charged.

Software like WinSCP, NotePad++, Typora, Firefox, etc... are all software that I use on a daily basis, that I happily pay for, or donate to.

It just feels better to buy something with a one-time payment because I walk away with the perception of owning an asset, rather than am running a subscription liability. Similarly donations make me feel better (often made with feature requests).

I think a lot of open source projects should revisit the one-time pay monetization strategy for additional convenience features. I think the people are becoming a lot more comfortable with spending money for software.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#120

I wish we move back to the days when most software was like utorrent, notepad++, etc. The standard response to this statement is "but today's software does so much more" - to which I don't agree. As someone who has been using computers since 1994 - including machines which did not have a hard drive - modern software is very very frustrating to use in every way I can think of.

Can you give a few examples? I’m not using computers that long and don’t know in which way modern software is so frustrating.

https://twitter.com/tumult/status/1400957303407316993

We were able to have latency free interaction with basic controls in the 80s.

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