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NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

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Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#81

Post by jvanderbot »

nine_k wrote: post #44
gamepsys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I greatly miss those tool bars. I think it's ironic that modern UI strives to be less cluttered than ever before while computer monitors are larger than ever before. * They encourage curiosity about previously undiscovered functionality. It improves feature discoverability. * It's way easier to find the correct tool bar icon than trying to hunt for a feature inside the menus. * If some toolbars are highlighted or dis…

There is no "One size fits all" UI, sadly. Absolute beginners should be shown a basic interface front and center, with a clear way to access more advanced features. More advanced users may benefit from a plethora of rich controls, all shown together. Experts may want to remove the visual clutter because they access features from keyboard without looking. Good software offers a way to achieve all of these, and often m…

Just give me a view->toolbars-> checklist and I'll sort it out.

FreeCAD does this well.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#82

Post by thrdbndndn »

tentacleuno wrote: post #26

I very much miss Notepad++ for making quick notes, and then being able to close the window without being asked whether I'd like to save the document. This, and auto-save (so not losing documents if you forget to save) is one of the main reasons I replaced Notepad with ++. Rather quickly, I found that I had to completely remove Notepad so muscle memory would stop guiding me to it. Good times (and sad ones; I lost a lo…

it's achievable with default notepad.exe in Win11.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#83

Post by Dalewyn »

darby_eight wrote: post #73
gamepsys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I greatly miss those tool bars. I think it's ironic that modern UI strives to be less cluttered than ever before while computer monitors are larger than ever before. * They encourage curiosity about previously undiscovered functionality. It improves feature discoverability. * It's way easier to find the correct tool bar icon than trying to hunt for a feature inside the menus. * If some toolbars are highlighted or dis…

> It's way easier to find the correct tool bar icon than trying to hunt for a feature inside the menus. What? I am just completely confused by this—menu items are labeled in clear textual language, sorted roughly by functionality. icons greatly depend on cultural context. Looking at a screenshot of notepad++ I could would understand maybe a third of the icons and could guess at another third at best. That said, it's…

Once you learn a toolbar, it just becomes visual and muscle memory. Not unlike using hotkeys to access something hidden under a couple layers of menus.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#84

Post by AdamH12113 »

j1elo wrote: post #46
AdamH12113 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice is to just turn the toolbar off (Settings -> Preferences -> General -> Toolbar -> Hide). I find it easier to skim through menus. You can turn off almost all of the extra UI elements if you want, which makes the interface very clean.

Funny that something as simple as hiding a toolbar requires diving through 5 steps. Doesn't it just offer that option upon right-click? It sounds natural and expected to me for a toolbar to do so.

It's really two or three steps -- select menu item, dialogue box page is already selected by default, click on checkbox. I was giving the full navigation.

Personally, I find that making every part of the UI an active control makes it easy to do things by mistake, especially hiding elements, which often doesn't have an obvious way to reverse the process. For one-time UI setup, I don't mind going through a dialogue box.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#85

Post by nullindividual »

tentacleuno wrote: post #26

I very much miss Notepad++ for making quick notes, and then being able to close the window without being asked whether I'd like to save the document. This, and auto-save (so not losing documents if you forget to save) is one of the main reasons I replaced Notepad with ++. Rather quickly, I found that I had to completely remove Notepad so muscle memory would stop guiding me to it. Good times (and sad ones; I lost a lo…

Notepad will now restore open files, like Notepad++ does. TextEdit on macOS does the same.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#86

Post by darby_eight »

Dalewyn wrote: post #83
darby_eight wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's way easier to find the correct tool bar icon than trying to hunt for a feature inside the menus. What? I am just completely confused by this—menu items are labeled in clear textual language, sorted roughly by functionality. icons greatly depend on cultural context. Looking at a screenshot of notepad++ I could would understand maybe a third of the icons and could guess at another third at best. That said, it's…

Once you learn a toolbar, it just becomes visual and muscle memory. Not unlike using hotkeys to access something hidden under a couple layers of menus.

Sure, but that's very different from "feature discovery". I totally get this with the floppy-disk icon (which is, ironically enough, now a terrible visual metaphor for persisting to local storage outside of cultural context), but I have no clue what "up arrow on top of down arrow" means, nor what the ¶ icon would do—start a new paragraph? Select the current paragraph? Open some kind of paragraph outline?

Granted, I don't use windows so it's entirely possible I'm just showing my ass here.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#87

Post by ydant »

hyperman1 wrote: post #64
CraigJPerry wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Jetbrains ui is hard to like. It’s form over function. The old ui (thankfully still available). Having to hover over a hamburger button just to cause it to draw the menu bar options then slide the mouse across to what you want is annoying. The new commit window alt+0 is better, the old modal always felt tacked on when everything else is a docked panel.

I tried it. The first week I shared your opinion. But then something flipped. I configured and learned hotkeys to hide the file/services/... pane and ended up with something I can only describe as 'calm'. Only 1 or 2 panes of code visible, and all functions hidden but available. The main detractor is indeed the hamburger menu. Vscode had ctrl-p, emacs has alt-x, and both provide a way to search for some function to e…

I like the new UI as well. There's always a learning curve, but after using it for months I haven't found any reason to switch back.

ctrl+ctrl is "run anything" (I tend to use ctrl+alt+r for the different but similar run menu instead).

I think what you want is "Actions" - which is default to "shift shift" and then click on a tab, or (ctrl/cmd)+shift+a to jump directly to that tab.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#88

Post by wolpoli »

j1elo wrote: post #46
AdamH12113 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My advice is to just turn the toolbar off (Settings -> Preferences -> General -> Toolbar -> Hide). I find it easier to skim through menus. You can turn off almost all of the extra UI elements if you want, which makes the interface very clean.

Funny that something as simple as hiding a toolbar requires diving through 5 steps. Doesn't it just offer that option upon right-click? It sounds natural and expected to me for a toolbar to do so.

I just tried it and was surprised that it doesn't offer Right-Click option to customize/turn off the toolbar. There was a period in Windows software when that level of customizability was expected.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#89

Post by rembicilious »

Npp (Notepad++) is my go to text editor for windows. It has been actively maintained for 20 years. It’s lightweight with a super responsive UI. I love the text search/replace interface. I keep a copy of the portable version on my keychain thumb drive because I never know when a friend or family member will have me muck around with their pc. Npp Version 7 runs splendidly on wine. I prefer it over the linux desktop text editors like Kate (which is a great editor in its own right).

I don’t think NotepadNext appimage or flatpak will be able to match Npp in regards to memory footprint and ui responsiveness.

But, I am excited to use it and it may find it’s way onto my thumbdrive because it runs natively on Linux so it doesn’t depend on wine.

Re: NotepadNext – a cross-platform reimplementation of Notepad++

#90

Post by denimnerd42 »

sharken wrote: post #25
collegeburner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an electron implementation would sorta kill the point of npp :)

Absolutely, the startup speed of npp is addictive. If only VS Code could be half as fast.

that's the main reason I stuck with sublimetext for soooo long. It's so fast and it can handle insanely huge files plus it can do column operations on text on insanely huge files. VS Code does seem to have been optimized since the first few years though and its not hardware related.
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