Suggestions are welcome, Steve Teixeira says in tweet

Sep 21, 2018 08:18 GMT  ·  By

Windows 10 as a whole is an operating system built on user feedback, and Microsoft uses the Windows Insider Program to give us the chance of trying out early builds of the operating system and then provide suggestions on what to improve.

Steve Teixeira, who is now General Manager, Partner App Experience, Windows and Devices Group at Microsoft, hopes users can help improve Notepad and Calculator as well, so he tweeted earlier this week to ask for help.

“Returned from sabbatical to discover I’m now the proud owner of a number of in-box #Windows apps, including notepad and calc. What should we do?” he posted.

Needless to say, there were nearly 150 answers to the tweet, and many asked for new features in Notepad, including a Microsoft Store UWP version.

“Great suggestions! Many of you recognize the balancing act necessary for apps like Notepad and Calc, where their utility is drived in no small part from their simplicity and lack of frills. At the same time, it's probably possible to do more without adding undo complexity,” a follow-up tweet reads.

October 2018 Update

Teixeira went on to ask a few questions to Notepad and Calculator users, some of which are related to coding, as it turns out that many people still use the basic text processor for programming.

“Lots of requests to sort of make Notepad into VSCode. I love VSCode (and even worked on it years ago), but why not just use VSCode if you want VSCode? Both apps seems to have their own lane,” he asked. “Speaking of code... several requests to make Notepad better for reading code (line nums, tabs, formatting, etc). When do you use Notepad rather than something else (Notepad++, VSCode, VS, etc) for code?”

If you’re one of the many Notepad fans out there, make sure that you get in touch with Teixeira, as he has become the go-to person for such improvements.

And at the same time, you should also install Windows 10 October 2018 Update, as it also brings several Notepad improvements, including Bing search integration in the context menu.