Future releases of Windows will no longer include the basic word processor program WordPad, which software giant Microsoft is retiring after 28 years in service.
On the 1st of September, Microsoft’s list of “Deprecated features for Windows client” was updated with a short note, which reads:
“WordPad is no longer being updated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. We recommend Microsoft Word for rich text documents like .doc and .rtf and Windows Notepad for plain text documents like .txt.”
Microsoft's recommendation includes a paid option, while the WordPad was free. However, WordPad was not popular or functional and was outclassed by web applications for text processing, such as Google Docs or Microsoft's own free version of Word Online. There are also better open-source alternatives available, such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice.
WordPad was introduced with Windows 95 and received some updates and redesigns over the years. However, the program does not support all the features defined in the RTF/Word 2007 specification, was plagued with incorrect rendering and formatting problems, and even had some security vulnerabilities.
Microsoft explains that “each version of Windows client adds new features and functionality,” and occasionally, new versions also remove features and functionality, often because they've added a newer option.
Among the other recently announced deprecated features was the productivity assistant Cortana as a standalone app on Windows.
In the Microsoft ecosystem, deprecation is the stage of the product lifecycle when a feature or functionality is no longer in active development and may be removed in future product or online service releases.
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