The Old New Thing

December 2003 - Page 3 of 5 - The Old New Thing

Rip-it

December 18, 2003 Dec 18, 2003 12/18/03
Raymond Chen
Last night I had to frog several dozen rows of knitting because I forgot to change needles. Color changes I remember. Needle changes I always forget. Probably because color changes are much more exciting...

How to void your warranty

December 18, 2003 Dec 18, 2003 12/18/03
Raymond Chen
MSDN just published an article telling people that it's okay to use reserved fields in an internal structure. Anybody who does this has just voided their warranty. Please put a "This program has a high likelihood of crashing after you install the next Service Pack or upgrade your OS" in your license agreement.And you wonder why app compat is ...

What is the window nesting limit?

December 18, 2003 Dec 18, 2003 12/18/03
Raymond Chen
In the old days, Windows didn't bother enforcing a nesting limit because, well, if you want to nest windows 200 deep, that's your decision. Many window operations are recursive, but since everything happened on the application's stack, it was your own responsibility to make your stack big enough so it didn't overflow. But Windows NT moved the ...

When marketing designs a screenshot

December 17, 2003 Dec 17, 2003 12/17/03
Raymond Chen
Have you checked out AMD's ads for their AMD Athlon 64 FX processor? The copy reads, "My adrenalin fix isn't what it used to be. Double the dose. AMD me." And it has a picture of a tough-looking guy glaring at the camera, challenging the reader to do their worst. But take a look at what's on his screen. It's a giant command window. Now ...

Tinkering with the look

December 17, 2003 Dec 17, 2003 12/17/03
Raymond Chen
I've been tinkering with the look of the comments section, based on initial feedback. Took me a while but I think I found something that works pretty well...

The unsafe device removal dialog

December 16, 2003 Dec 16, 2003 12/16/03
Raymond Chen
In a comment, somebody asked what the deal was with the unsafe device removal dialog in Windows 2000 and why it's gone in Windows XP. I wasn't involved with that dialog, but here's what I remember: The device was indeed removed unsafely. If it was a USB storage device, for example, there may have been unflushed I/O buffers. If it were a ...

The migration continues

December 15, 2003 Dec 15, 2003 12/15/03
Raymond Chen
Hey folks, this blog is moving to a new home. It'll take me a while to set up shop there, though, so please be patient. Some time after the new year, the content will likely migrate to the new location...

Welcome to the New Old New Thing

December 15, 2003 Dec 15, 2003 12/15/03
Raymond Chen
Hey there, everybody. It's going to take me a while to settle in, so please be patient. It seems I always celebrate a new blog by designing some insane multi-part series on some obscure aspect of Win32, so I think I'll welcome this site with a series of articles that demonstrate various things you can do with the shell namespace. I haven't ...

Tote Hose in Weilburg

December 12, 2003 Dec 12, 2003 12/12/03
Raymond Chen
Wenn Teenies shoppen gehen: Flugzeuge im Warenkorb. This article caught my eye because it opens with a German slang phrase I learned just a few weeks ago: "Tote Hose" which means roughly "Absolutely nothing doing". Here's an English version of the article for those whose German isn't quite up to ...

Why are structure sizes checked strictly?

December 12, 2003 Dec 12, 2003 12/12/03
Raymond Chen
You may have noticed that Windows as a general rule checks structure sizes strictly. For example, consider the MENUITEMINFO structure: Notice that the size of this structure changes depending on whether WINVER >= 0x0500 (i.e., whether you are targetting Windows 2000 or higher). If you take the Windows 2000 version of this structure and ...