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Notepad++ v8 release

notepad-plus-plus.org

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Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#81
I remember starting out to code.. npp was a breath of fresh air.. due to my line of work I now do everything in vim via prompt.. but npp is the first thing I open when I work in gui.. can't express how happy I am to see its still flourishing..

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#82
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…

Winamp 5.0 worked on a 400 mhz Pentium II with 64 MB of memory (total) and was crazy responsive, while also being capable of much more than the modern Spotify app

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.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#83
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 want this laser engraved on a big stick that is then used to beat every UX designer on the planet before they are allowed to touch anything.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#84
post #49
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…

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…

> It's using 160mb of ram

And that is acceptable for a music player ???.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, I think the UI is fit for purpose, doesn't need a flatso look and feel or massive space used for static text. Thanks for building an awesome tool that runs for weeks at a time on my desktop.

Can't agree more. Notepad++ is a great tool, that does what it's supposed to do. Maximal milk for minimal moo. I wish there were more tools like this. winscp, 7-zip, all having the same win32 look, and I like them. I never got people complaining about outdated look. When did computers become fashion items, with a new color every year? Last season we went for round corners, but these are clearly out. Today, flat is th…

Strongly agree with you and parent. Unfortunately, lot of Windows settings are now available by default only using a "modern" UI whereas the old style was fast, consistent and extremely user-friendly.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#86
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UI might look outdated, but on the other hand it's light weight and fast. There are a bunch of fancy text editors out there that are simply a resource hog.

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 not using the buttons at all. Even if they _are_ recognizable, who wants to hunt for icons in a huge list? So they just sit there, taking up space.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#87
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 use Electron? The UI is non native, the JavaScript doesn't offer best performance, the binaries are big and the memory consumption is high. First, because some companies we're in need for a replacement of Flash[2]. Second, web developers are cheap. Third, it reduces time to market. Especially the big tech companies are "monopoly mode" - gather quicker more users than others and dominate.

Who pays? You, at least three times:

* Bad usability, slow execution and awkward UI

* Hardware requirements. You have to buy more RAM. In case of most laptops with soldered RAM you have to buy new laptops.

* Either they take or data or your license fees

I don't claim that platform native developers will code more efficient but developers who can code in C, C++, Rust or even Python can provide you with fast, small and slick applications where you don't have to wait until some JS loads the textblock for some placeholder while your scrolling - their applications aren't even faster necessarily. Likely these developers keep their data locally, update this data when appropriate (keyboard, file or network) and don't launch an entire web-browser. I recommend providing a base foundation and using a native toolkit of the platform, either Gtk or Qt[3]. This is not a new recommendation, the issue is that the industry prefers to ignores well known, recommend practices.

Now. Microsoft Teams?

+ Available on Linux

+ Quick and easy installation via Flatpak

o You can spend a lot of money for integrations

- Quoting is not possible on desktop

- Slow startup

- Fullscreen hidden instead of using "l" or "F11" keys

- Notifications Management is a maze of options

[1] Not fully correct. Electron is forbidden on iOS because it is a full blown webbrowser. Maybe also for less well meant reasons.

[2] History repeats. They refuse to learn?

[3] Actually Google did that. Chrome used on Linux Gtk, on MacOS it used Quartz and on Windows some layer to Win32. It was a fast and lean and the UI was native.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winamp 5.0 worked on a 400 mhz Pentium II with 64 MB of memory (total) and was crazy responsive, while also being capable of much more than the modern Spotify app

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.

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#89
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winamp 5.0 worked on a 400 mhz Pentium II with 64 MB of memory (total) and was crazy responsive, while also being capable of much more than the modern Spotify app

I remember using and liking Winamp, but I didn't use it for anything other than playing music files. How was/is Winamp more capable than the Spotify app?

Winamp has tons of really powerful plugins. You can use them to play all kinds of strange file formats. One I really like is SNESAmp [1], a plug-in for playing Super Nintendo game music.

Another Winamp plug-in that’s incredibly useful is the disk-writer, included with the application. With it you can use any of the input plugins to transcode files to uncompressed WAV format.

[1] http://alpha-ii.com/Download/Main.html#SNESamp

Re: Notepad++ v8 release

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Winamp 5.0 worked on a 400 mhz Pentium II with 64 MB of memory (total) and was crazy responsive, while also being capable of much more than the modern Spotify app

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.

Winamp could handle streaming with plugins, hell even the XP era version of Windows Media Player could handle streaming from network sources. Spotify makes it easy to search for music and easy to share playlists with friends, but that's about it for features it has that music player apps from nearly 20 years ago don't. Oh and it has ads too I guess?
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