The Old New Thing

June 2005 - Page 2 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Google is the cute two-year-old girl with curly blond hair that gets all the attention

June 21, 2005 Jun 21, 2005 06/21/05
Raymond Chen
Let's see, Google Maps adds the world outside the United States, Canada and the UK, and people go ga-ga. Nevermind that Google's new "maps" have nothing beyond country boundaries. "Aww, look at Google, she's so cute and adorable!" I'm sure the people at the existing online map services like MapQuest and MSN MapPoint are sitting there like ...

The Date/Time control panel is not a calendar

June 21, 2005 Jun 21, 2005 06/21/05
Raymond Chen
Although many people use the Date/Time control panel to flip through a calendar, that's not what it is for. In fact, if you use it that way, you can create all sorts of havoc! In its original incarnation in Windows 95, the Date/Time control panel changed your date and time. If you clicked through the calendar to see next month, you ...

What's the difference between autocomplete and dropdown history?

June 20, 2005 Jun 20, 2005 06/20/05
Raymond Chen
One shows things that might be, the other shows things that were. Both of them try to help you type something, but they operate differently (and look confusingly similar). Let's take the second case first. Dropdown history, like you see in the Run dialog, common file dialogs, and the Internet Explorer address bar. The cue for dropdown history...

Is there ever such a thing as a good letter from the IRS?

June 17, 2005 Jun 17, 2005 06/17/05
Raymond Chen
I arrived home yesterday to find a letter from the IRS in my mailbox. Dare I open it? The only other interaction with the IRS I'd had previously was several years ago where they told me I had overpaid my taxes and sent me a refund check of a few hundred dollars. I went back and reviewed my return and concluded that my original return was ...

Why do NTFS and Explorer disagree on filename sorting?

June 17, 2005 Jun 17, 2005 06/17/05
Raymond Chen
Some people have noticed that NTFS automatically sorts filenames, but does so in a manner different from Explorer. Why is that? For illustration purposes, I created files with the following names: And here's the sort order for various scenarios, at least on my machine. (You'll later see why it's important whose machine you test on.) First...

What is the difference between "Unpin from Start menu" and "Remove from this list"?

June 16, 2005 Jun 16, 2005 06/16/05
Raymond Chen
The list of programs on the left hand side of the Start menu is really two lists. (You can see the separator line between them.) The top list is the so-called "pin list". This is the list of programs you picked to be "locked" to the top of the Start menu. You can "pin" a program by right-clicking it and selecting "Pin to Start menu", or you ...

Displaying the dictionary, part 3: Using an owner-data listview

June 15, 2005 Jun 15, 2005 06/15/05
Raymond Chen
Owner-data listviews let you take over data management from the listview. This is useful in our case since we have over twenty thousand dictionary entries, and creating even that many blank listview items takes an unacceptably long amount of time. Let's convert our listview to an owner-data listview. Believe it or not, this is quite easy to...
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Displaying the dictionary, part 2: Using text callbacks

June 14, 2005 Jun 14, 2005 06/14/05
Raymond Chen
As we noted last time, adding items to the listview takes an absurd amount of time. Today, we'll make a failed attempt at improving this because it lets me illustrate a listview technique and it lays the groundwork for the real fix next time. Instead of creating the items in their entirety, let's set their text to LPSTR_TEXTCALLBACK. This ...
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Seattle International Juggling Festival 2005

June 13, 2005 Jun 13, 2005 06/13/05
Raymond Chen
In Seattle this weekend, you will have the opportunity to see people throwing things more things into the air than they have hands for, and even learn how to do it yourself: [T]he primary goal of this festival will be to teach as many people to juggle as possible. The Big Show is Saturday at 7pm. The events are free but donations are ...