Sunday, February 01, 2009

But I still love Notepad

Notepad – my favorite editor. Even after working with popular word processing applications, I feel comfortable with Notepad. And when I edit HTML, instead of any WYSIWYG editor, I like to write codes in Notepad.

I really do not know the reason for my endless affection for Notepad; psychologists might be able to reveal the truth. As I am an avid typist and I rarely make spelling mistakes, I do not need spelling assistance. I like the simplicity Notepad has and I do not lose my attention in the crowd of uncountable icons. Black fonts on white background resemble century old conception of writing pads that my eyes and mind are habituated with.

I must admit that MS Word provides the rich text editor with helpful formatting functions that help to create documents without getting puzzled.

And I really feel overwhelmed when I enter today’s theme-specific world. Themes are everywhere starting from Durgapuja pandals in Kolkata to Gmail Inbox. Themes on Durgapuja pandals help to rediscover our forgotten cultural heritage. But why do we need these themes with an email application? So many images, colors, fonts – why? What is the use behind making the web more bulky?

Carbon footprint of Internet industry has already grabbed the attention of expert minds – web pages with more images, videos, animation and other special effects generate higher amount of CO2 when viewed by the surfers. Then why we are up to make our pages heavy?

I access my email inbox to receive messages – text messages. I feel comfortable to read them over a white background with no funny creature popping up from the corners. Hence, I reject the proposal of installing themes on Gmail – I am going to use the traditional and classic look.

Even on Orkut, I do not use any themes. Some of the themes pain my eyes and reduce readability. I am not against innovation and creativity. I understand that it involves great deal of knowledge to integrate these themes with applications like Gmail and Orkut. But, why they are doing this? Are they innovating just to innovate OR to show how expert programmers they are?

Whatever, I will stick with my Notepad affinity when it comes to write something or take down some notes.

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