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Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Starts Testing Tabs In Notepad (thurrott.com) 72

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Microsoft has started testing Tabs in Notepad with Windows Insiders on the Dev Channel today. Thurrott reports: The update to the Notepad will start rolling out to all Dev Channel testers today alongside the new Windows 11 preview build 25281, which brings a couple of other changes. Tabs in Notepad was "a top requested feature from the community," the Windows Insider team emphasized today. The app now supports dragging a tab out into a separate window, and a new setting also lets users choose whether files should open in a new tab or a new window by default.

"There are also new keyboard shortcut keys to support managing tabs as well as some improvements to managing unsaved files, like automatically generating the file name/tab title based on content and a refreshed unsaved changes indicator," the Windows Insider team explained. Microsoft is still working to fix issues causing some keyboard shortcuts to not work as expected, and performance will also remain a priority for the team.
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Microsoft Starts Testing Tabs In Notepad More

Microsoft Starts Testing Tabs In Notepad

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  • Microsoft Starts Testing Tabs In Notepad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RemindMeLater ( 7146661 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @07:14PM (#63223230)
    Should be a headline from 1996

  • Maybe they should have tested editing basic text documents in it first.

    • Re:Maybe they should have (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @08:25PM (#63223418) Homepage Journal

      I still find it weird and funny that shitty-ass WordPad can handle larger files than Notepad.

      Microsoft should just give up the fight and buy Notepad++, it's so far beyond their dreck..

      • It’s absolutely baffling how much Microsoft neglects Notepad. I get that once upon a time they probably made it policy that it and Wordpad could only have the most bare features so people would buy Works or Word and it probably felt sassy not supporting unix style line termination but come the fuck on.

        To it’s credit it has crude Unicode support which makes it better than Slashdot.

        • Yeah, has it even been updated since windows 1.1?

          "To itâ(TM)s credit it has crude Unicode support which makes it better than Slashdot." ha ha ha! :)

        • Re:Maybe they should have (Score:4, Interesting)

          by RotateLeftByte ( 797477 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @07:57AM (#63224590)

          They could be preparing to offer it on subscription. $10.99/month for a text editor that can now handle tabs.

          In other news, downloads of Notepad++ have gone through the roof.

          Once again, MS proves that it does not have a clue.

      • Microsoft should just give up the fight and buy Notepad++, it's so far beyond their dreck..

        Am I seeing this right? Someone on Slashdot is suggesting Microsoft buy out a competitor, buy out an open source one at that point, promoting reduced competition and the acquisition of software we all love? And on top of that your UID is low enough that you should know better.

        People have fallen on their swords after writing far smart things than that. Shame on you.

        No, Microsoft should continue to ship a completely independent and simple editor and leave it up to users to install what they want.

      • Notepad++ suffers from the same problem that IntelliJ Idea has historically had - too much up front. Thankfully, the most recent updates of Idea have provided a vastly streamlined UI - I enabled it immediately and there is no going back. I hope Notepad++ undergoes the same transformation.

  • Notepad++ (Score:5, Funny)

    by grimr ( 88927 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @07:25PM (#63223256)

    is checking its calendar to see if it's April 1st.

  • Amazing. What a day to be alive. (Score:4, Informative)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @07:31PM (#63223270)
    With tabs in Notepad, Windows is finally complete(*) and the people of the world can rejoice.

    (*) Some bugs may remain.

  • Tabs seem to have come about at about the same time that stupid fucking touch interfaces were pushed on everyone along with other phone style UI crap. Like apps preferring full screen and other shit that works like ass for real work and multiple monitors. That and many other idiotic UI choices like pinned apps that do different things when you click on them rather than the same thing every time when it used to be simple quick launch. Quick launch opens the app each and every time you click on it. Pinned app

  • LOL, wut? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I use Notepad to jot stuff. It's not an IDE. I want it to come up fast, virtually instantaneously. What is this "community" and what's it smoking? I guess whatever it is that makes you want to stick with Windows at this point, and be their product.

    • I suppose if you can't install anything on your machine at all like say notepad++, this would be some sort of improvement over "classic" notepad

      • Re:LOL, wut? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dfm3 ( 830843 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @11:11PM (#63223790) Journal
        If you're working on someone else's computer and need a quick, bare-bones text editor that you know will be on the machine and that just works, it's indispensable. Especially if you only need to change one line in a file or need somewhere to temporarily store a bit of text outside of the clipboard for a few minutes. I also frequently use it to strip formatting from text when pasting from one document into another.

        • oh, I completely agree though, I suppose if you're at some company and you have slightly more than zero tech skills and want np++ but aren't allowed to install anything since corporate IT is often terrible, this would be an upgrade though knowing microsoft the new notepad will be a downgrade

          what they should do, instead, is just add tabs to "wordpad" since that's their more "mature" product

  • large files and *nix line endings (Score:4, Interesting)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @07:51PM (#63223318)

    I'd be happy if Notepad could handle even not so large files, its hangs on large files. I'd also be happy if it could properly display *nix text files with LF line endings instead of Windows style CRLF endings.

    I mean basic functionality should come way before UI garbage like tabs. An how old is Notepad anyway? Basic functionality is way over due.

    • Notepad isn't a real text editor: I didn't know how people still uses it...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Notepad has supported Unix line endings since 2018: https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]

      As for large files, they are a difficult problem for a text edit. When opening one there is no way to determine the number of lines other than to scan the entire file. While memory mapping can help reduce the amount of RAM used, it then gets tricky to edit the file because inserting text either needs massive amounts of copying or a complex linked list system. I don't know of any text editors that handle really large files w

      • I don't know of any text editors that handle really large files well.

        Look there's "large" files and there's "LARGE" files. We're only talking about "large" files here. There are plenty of cases where you open something in Notepad and it completely locks up, so you just close it an open it in Wordpad, or Notepad++ instead.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Yeah, although it depends on the version of Windows. Notepad uses the standard text box control, so newer versions of Windows that optimized that perform better. Still, it's on the slower end, that's for sure.

        • I'd think Notepad's niche is small simple text files. If you need to edit something larger than 40k or so, perhaps a different editor like notepad++, up to a few hundred MB. If you need to edit text files over 1GB, then some specialised editor is probably the way to go. Things like counting lines and such in a large file is not straightforward (at least, you need to read the entire file). Probably for text files over GB you want an editor-friendly way of storing them in e.g. tiles that whose size is a multi

          • On Windows Server sometimes you just want to look at a log file. Open anything even slightly big and Notepad hangs.

    • I'd also be happy if it could properly display *nix text files with LF line endings instead of Windows style CRLF endings.

      For that you'll need to finally let go of your old Windows 7 system and move to a current version of Windows. Or heck the previous one. Both of them have versions of Notepad supporting LF line endings just fine.

  • Who uses Notepad? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by UMichEE ( 9815976 ) on Thursday January 19, 2023 @07:56PM (#63223336)

    Who uses Notepad? I would expect that everyone who regularly uses a text editor like Notepad would download something a little bit more sophisticated. I use Notepad++ myself and can't really imagine doing my work with something like Notepad, even if they added in tabs.

    • Yeap: almost any text editor is way better than notepad...

    • Notepad is ideal as a utility which lets me create and manipulate unformatted text which might then go into another system (e.g. web-based management console or email). I regularly end the day with multiple Notepad windows open which I have neglected to close after use (and they always prevent my computer from restarting or shutting down because I didn't save them!)

      Of course, Win+R -> Ctrl+V -> Ctrl+A -> Ctrl+C is a much simpler option for removing formatting from a single line of plain text. :-)

    • I use notepad, a lot, precisely because it isn't sophisticated. It loads instantly, and if I want to dump a few lines of text somewhere, notepad is ideal. Likewise, drafting thought-out comments to copy/paste into social media I do in notepad. Compiling lists of urls for whatever, I do that in notepad. For those many small tasks for which notepad is good enough, notepad is idea precisely because there is no clutter. My next choice, or first choice on Linux, is vim in a terminal. I often use notepads as defa

    • Its fine for looking at simple text files that are used as (human readable) inputs to software. Opens fast, doesn't do anything weird to the files. I *could* download something else, but that would take effort and I'd rather spend that effort on something else

    • It's used as a raw plain text buffer.

      Jef Raskin, designer of the Macintosh, said that a computer should treat input user as sacred, never losing any text typed.
      He even designed a prototype computer which would always be in text-input mode, never ignoring what you type because 'the window has no focus".

      MS Windows doesn't have that feature, but Notepad is the second best; it opens instantly, and then you can type anything or paste anything from the clipboard, knowing that you will not have to wait several sec

    • Who uses Notepad?

      Nearly every person touching another machine, some server, or some locked down vendor provided piece of equipment. In many computers around the world it along with wordpad are the only thing installed, on a system where you have no rights to even download Notepad++ much less install it.

  • Really shows you why Microsoft is THE thought leader in software. A truly brave, bold move to show the competitors who's their boss!

  • That cloud, that one right there! Can you believe the nerve of that cloud!

  • Wow, something we have been doing with gedit, pluma, and kate for years and years and years...

    Pluma also allows you to rip tabs off for new windows.

  • How many editors do we need from Microsoft? You could buy Sublime and bundle it with Windows for us all or hey why not just install vscode by default or is that the idea?

  • Literally the first step I take after any clean Windows install is to install Notepad++. Why would anyone ever use the stock Notepad?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Corporate or school IT department has installed software restriction policies on non-developer computers that block unapproved executables from starting, and IT hasn't approved your request to install Notepad++.

  • Like someone else already said this should be a headline from 10-15 years ago

  • why (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    notepad and mspaint are the 2 applications microsoft got right, leave em alone there is vscode for people who want more and notepad++ for people who want something inbetween

  • It seems this is about the level MS can do these days. At least they seem to not break things or make them worse this time because nobody uses notepad for real work anyways.

  • MS starts trying out tabs on Notepad. At this breakneck speed, we should arrive at the function level of Notepad++ around 2095.

    The function level of today, mind you.

    A more sensible improvement to Notepad would be the ability to remove it altogether so typing "note" in the start menu would instantly result in Notepad++ being selected ... oh wait, it does, because Notepad is called "Editor" in Windows.

    Never mind. Carry on. Don't care anymore, everything's good. At least as long as they're working on this, the

  • Isn't notepad one of those joke applications like ms solitaire or minesweeper. The purpose of it to show users how to move windows around and how to enter text into a space. I didn't think it was meant to be have any real application.

    • What it's supposed to be is a simple verbatim text editor with no special features to confuse anyone who support is having to walk through editing a file. And now they are fucking it up, shock amazement, because that's what Microsoft does.

      Tabbed editors are good, they should make one, and leave Notepad the fuck alone.

  • It's called the taskbar.

  • First they fixed Windows terminal, and the crowd cheered. Now they're fixing notepad, and the crowd is going wild! But the real pandamonium will hit next year, when they drag Clippy from the bit bucket and spruce it up with a little chatGPT. Don't laugh - Clippy is coming, and it wants to talk to you.

    • When? Sure they added things, but it completely looks like they bolted some bits on PowerShell and called it a day.
      It doesn't even follow the design patterns of the rest of their apps.
  • Doesn't matter. Notepad++ is my default on Windows and I will not work on a computer that I cannot install it on
    Plus it doesn't matter. This will be like Edge and Explorer. The tabs are in the wrong spot.

  • I'll take "things none of your customers want" for $200, Alex

  • So it'll be like notepad++ without all the features.

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