Hacker News Reader

Comment by smhenderson | Hacker News Reader

Isn't mspaint in Windows 10 basically the same thing but with a ribbon instead of a toolbar?

I don't much care for the ribbon but I'm used to it now. Hitting WinKey-R, mspaint, [Enter] is still my goto for simple picture editing, even just recording a screenshot despite the existence of the snipping tool...

Other than the minor annoyance of getting used to the ribbon I felt as if I was still using the same old paint when I did this.

View on HN

No, it is a very different application. For example when you draw something, like a rectangle, and then you try to draw something else over it, it instead moves the rectangle - failing to do the most basic task: being a paint program.

It does have some nice features, like the premade shapes and brushes, but those could have been added to the previous MS Paint application without breaking its UX.

Two things I dislike about the new Paint are;

1. Can't select secondary colour with right click

2. Needs way more clicks to get a filled Rectangle

Number 2 took me from using paint constantly to just using photoshop instead.

1. Use shift+click.

I still find myself trying to do #1 frequently

1. On latest Windows version I am on now it works as the classic paint. 2. On classic paint you set colors > rectangle > select filling (w/ outline or w/o). On new paint is set colors > rectangle > fill > select filling > outline > select outline. So 1 or 3 more if you want to remove the outline.

It's similar but in my opinion with every release Microsoft makes their products slightly more unintuitive. This version of Paint is far simpler to view and instantly know what to click to get what you want.

Similar to you, "discoverability" is what irks me about MS trend recently. As you say, the version you can "view and instantly know" = easy to discover what/how you can do.

A lot of MS stuff recently seems to have forgotten that people need visual cues to "know" what to do.

I immediately searched for the XP version the first time I encountered this extremely frustrating behaviour:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...

I honestly would prefer if the post was left unanswered than having to read shit like

> Hi,

> Thanks for the update on the issue.

> We have tested the same with the latest Windows updates installed on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.

> As suggested, I would recommend sharing this as a feedback on the Feedback app of Windows 10.

> Do let us know if you face any Windows related issues in future. We will be glad to assist you.

> Good Day!

That whole forum is a dumpster fire. When a search takes me there, I brace myself to read a poorly-written, incorrect, dismissive answer. Nine times out of ten, the questioner is clearly more knowledgeable about the problem than the person answering it.

Win Vista and later paint replaces the palette of a 256 color bitmap with a completely different one upon saving, to name a major and breaking difference. I grabbed the paint.exe from an old XP and it works absolutely fine, even on 7 and probably 10.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com