I’ll say no more.

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you just might find
You get what you need

—Writer(s): Mick Jagger, Keith Richards

:-)

Please let people decide for themselves what they like

Of course.
But there’s an understanding that you don’t always get what you like.

I wasn’t referring to Don. I was speaking in general.

Understood. :-)

Please let people decide for themselves what is better for them and what is not.

Notepad++ is not a democracy; it’s a dictatorship. :-)

Let me rephrase: Please let people decide for themselves what they like and what not.

The Notepad++ author decides what is “better”.

Yes, that is his privilege and no one else’s.

People hate change for the sake of change.

The Notepad++ author does not make changes just to make changes.
If a change is made, it is deemed that it is bettering something.

Please let people decide for themselves what is better for them and what is not.

Notepad++ is not a democracy; it’s a dictatorship. :-)
The Notepad++ author decides what is “better”.
And, he’s decided on this topic.

Anyone whose ever used multiple versions of Adobe’s Photoshop Elements recognizes that sentiment as Adobe’s First Commandment!

I like a more general form : People hate change for the sake of change.

Interestingly enough, I started doing a revamp on the dBASE Plus UDL, to do keyword categorizing so I can set them up for individual users to color as they wish, and I had all these tabs open that ran off screen, so I was using the little navigating arrows to move in them, and I figured, ah…it’s time to setup a Document List view, and a Project Panel, and while trying to see if I could select all the tabs at once, I found out about…a keyboard shortcut to navigate between open tabs…Cntrl-Keypad#. Wow…imaging using this software all this time and never knowing that.

My point is, the software and it’s invisible features are just fine, especially for folks that don’t need to be overwhelmed with a plethora of options that they don’t even know they need yet. Let people have the fun of discovering the features as they are able to run in the enviornment and learn new things they didn’t know they needed. Curiosity will lead them to wonder why the tab visible controls appear and disappear as they move the mouse over them…and unless they are intrinsically incapable of learning, they’ll figure it out and maybe want to learn more. One more reason to like NPP…always a surprize around the corner, but not one that will prevent you from functioning in the environment, no matter what your preferences or skill level is. Just two more cents.

People just hate change, even when it is a change for the better…

Please let people decide for themselves what is better for them and what is not.

I only know the button is there because I’ve seen it always there before. If I hadn’t, if I were a new user of NPP, I would NOT know the button was there. I’d turn on the “show close buttons on inactive tabs” - and then come here to ask for help: “I turned on show close buttons on inactive tabs, but I still don’t see the close buttons. What’s wrong?” In fact, I might even have done that as a moderately experienced user, if I hadn’t seen the posts here describing the change. So no, “We all know the button is there” is actually not the case.

You only want to see the close button on the tab you are intending to use it on - but you are not me, and I am not you.

I figure GUI commands come in tiers.

• The first tier are the very frequently used keyboard commands.
• The second tier are toolbar buttons
• The third tier are the right-click context menu items.
• The fourth+ tier are the commands in the menu.

This is interesting.
Maybe it is also interesting that first and second tier commands are available ALWAYS and have no categorization. The third and fourth tier take some effort to get to, but have some logical grouping to them.

The complaints come from the change to “Show close buttons on inactive tabs” which no longer shows the close button on the inactive tabS, but only on the one inactive tab that’s hovered over.

I’m not sure why that’s a complaint.
Why do users want to look at a bunch of buttons?
We all know the button is there.
Just show me exactly where it is on the tab I’m intending to use it on; that’s the only close button I need to see.
I think this complaint stems from years of just blindly seeing all those buttons.
If the buttons were hidden on the inactive tabs from Day 1, no one would have missed them.
People just hate change, even when it is a change for the better, or how something should have been from the start.

The second and third tiers I prefer to have a limited number of commands, if not quite so limited as the fistful of keyboard commands. So I’m happy to be able to customize toolbars to prune the many default items. In particular, I’m a fan of the Customize Toolbar plugin for NPP.

That the pinned tab feature can be turned off is a good thing, yes. The complaints come from the change to “Show close buttons on inactive tabs” which no longer shows the close button on the inactive tabS, but only on the one inactive tab that’s hovered over.

My keyboard shortcut navigation in editors/word processors etc, stopped when we got GUI’s. Yeah, it’s faster, but I’m getting older and my penchant for not wanting to memorize excessive amounts of key combinations to do things, especially in bloatware and non-standard key combinations across applications, has made me a mouse keyboard cowboy. :-) I love right click menu options, as it should mean those options are the most likely to be used for this UI component. Since the tab mostly just tells me the name of my document, whether it’s active, I don’t find the close/pin tabs confusing, as many applications have them, but again, they are a mouse option and I’m welcoming to that aspect.

The fact that I can turn it off, makes it all that much better, so I have no grudge. That’s one of the reasons I like NPP, options. Since DOS, Windows GUI (in particular) has been trying to keep the users(especially stupid ones), from tampering with settings that allow them to control their environment and the way it behaves…funny considering how OOP (which Windows claims to be) was supposed to make setting options easier…and instead they hid it from the user so they can’t shutdown the more aggravating of Windows behaviours, defaults and other bloatware features…slowing even the fastest computer down, and pushing the need for faster and faster hardware. My only gripe with NPP is that it keeps up with Windows. :-)…but I also can use NPP’s older versions for older tamer versions, albeit security hazard versions of Windows.

So although I’m in the handful groups, I also don’t find the options annoying, especially when I can shut them off if I do. :-)

While I have been following the pinned tab topic with interest I don’t use Notepad++'s official “pinned tab” feature. For years, I have “pinned” tabs by using Ctrl+Shift+PageUp and/or Ctrl+Shift+PageDown to move a tab of interest to be one of the first nine tabs and then using Ctrl+Numeric # to jump to that file. When I’m working on a project that has dozens or hundreds of files open then I usually “pin” the main project file by making it one of the first nine tabs and just keep mental track of the up to nine active “pinned” tabs.

I also have dozens of mini-scripts that open a main project file and via command line flags can open associated files in Notepad++. In a sense, these are also “pinned” files as I can get to them in a couple of keystrokes.

My personal workflow may well put me in your “Are there people here who contradict this?” category.

Something I often run across is a need to toggle between two or more files. Let’s say I’m at tab #12 and realize I need to toggle between tab #12 and tab #47. I have been toying with the idea of creating what I call “toggle groups.” They should be fast and easy to set up and tear down. If a file is a member of a toggle group than something like Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown would shift between members of a group and perhaps a way to pull up a Document List or Switcher style list of the files in the group. For now, I create poor-person’s toggle groups by moving the files in group so that they are adjacent tabs. I have done some thought experiments (without success) plus testing to see if I could use Notepad++'s pin mechanism to implement toggle groups