WinUIpad: Mop Up in Aisle WinUI 3 ⭐

This is a minor update, but I added Zoom and Recent files support to WinUIpad and fixed a few bugs. You may recall that in the previous installment, I discussed how I had published the project to GitHub so anyone can follow along, and I had added one additional feature, for line ending and encoding format support.

Here’s what’s new.

Zoom support

I go back and forth on whether I even want zoom in the app, but I had implemented this in the past and figured I should just add it for completeness. This version has the normal menu-based items (Zoom in, Zoom out, and Restore zoom, under View) and the status bar text. But you can also click the zoom item in the status bar to pick a specific zoom level, which is nice.

Recent files

When I first asked Clairvoyance to create a from-scratch Notepad clone using the Windows App SDK, the Recent files functionality was part of what it created. And so I’ve added it here too, since it seems to work quite well. I didn’t write any of this code.

Font change fix

In the original version of this app that I posted to GitHub, the font wouldn’t change immediately when you changed it in the app settings page. I figured the fix for that would be easy enough, since the settings change would appear if you closed and then restarted the app. But when I (re)added the zoom code noted above, it just started working normally: I had commented out a line of code in FontSizeCombo_SelectionChanged() tied to the zoom feature previously. Doy.

Next steps

There’s still a lot to do but most of it minor and bug- or fit and finish related. Off the top of my head:

• Bug: When you open a document or make certain settings changes, the current document is marked as having changes that need to be saved.
• Bug: If you have multiple instances of the app open and close one, they all close.
• Fit and finish: While I probably won’t change the settings page after mulling over some ideas, there are lots of fit and finish issues, including with the menus, which aren’t quite where I want them.
• Fit and finish: I had big ideas for the unsaved changes indicator that appears in each tab, but the current version of the app just uses the old-style bullet next to the document name text. I’d like to make this look and work like Notepad does now.

I’m sure there’s more, there always is. So … More soon. 🙂