The Old New Thing

September 2006 - Page 2 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Things you already know: How do I wait until my dialog box is displayed before doing something?

September 22, 2006 Sep 22, 2006 09/22/06
Raymond Chen
One customer wanted to wait until the dialog box was displayed before displaying its own dialog box. (Personally, I think immediately displaying a doubly-nested dialog box counts as starting off on the wrong foot from a usability standpoint, but let's set that issue aside for now.) The customer discovered that displaying the nested dialog box...
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It’s that season again: The Microsoft Company Meeting

September 21, 2006 Sep 21, 2006 09/21/06
Raymond Chen
Today is the 2006 Microsoft Company Meeting, and with it the continuation of what I consider to be one of the most annoying Company Meeting traditions: The group that cheers wildly any time their project name is mentioned. It's never the same group year to year. Instead, a different group (or groups) independent decides to be the annoying one...

If you don't trust your administrators, you've already lost

September 21, 2006 Sep 21, 2006 09/21/06
Raymond Chen
Occasionally, a customer will ask for a way they can restrict what the administrator can do. The short answer to this is, "Um, no, that's why they're called 'Administrator'." You can try to set up roadblocks, say, ACL files to revoke access to a file you don't want the administrator to read, but the Administrator can always take ownership of ...

It is as if our leaders have not been educated in orbital space colonization

September 20, 2006 Sep 20, 2006 09/20/06
Raymond Chen
Yesterday were held the primary elections in the state of Washington. Most of the partisan positions were uncontested, so there wasn't much to research. The one with the most candidates was for one of the state's Senate seats, and among those candidates were some who might be considered "a bit unorthodox". None of these candidates appears ...

Don't forget to unregister your window classes when your DLL shuts down dynamically

September 20, 2006 Sep 20, 2006 09/20/06
Raymond Chen
If your DLL is unloaded dynamically, you need to make sure you have unregistered your window classes. (You can tell whether the DLL_PROCESS_DETACH is due to a dynamic unload or whether it's due to process termination by checking the lpReserved parameter to your DllMain function.) If you forget to unregister your window classes, all sorts of ...
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Why doesn't the Shutdown dialog use Alt to get alternate behavior?

September 19, 2006 Sep 19, 2006 09/19/06
Raymond Chen
When you select "Shut Down" from the Start menu, a dialog appears with three options: "Stand By", "Turn Off" and "Restart". To get the secret fourth option "Hibernate" you have to press the shift key. Would the Alt key be the more obvious choice for revealing alternate options? You might think so, but it so happens that Alt already has ...

Project Update 2: Voyage to Our Hollow Earth

September 18, 2006 Sep 18, 2006 09/18/06
Raymond Chen
If everything went according to plan, the trip to the hole in the Arctic Ocean should have completed a few months ago. I went to the web site to see what they found, only to discover that it's been postponed another year, to June 26, 2007. This is clearly the handiwork of the world government attempting to suppress the release of ...

Sometimes my psychic powers are weak

September 18, 2006 Sep 18, 2006 09/18/06
Raymond Chen
Why does my MFC program exit unexpectedly? The stack trace at the point we hit ExitInstance goes like this: Thanks. You can already see some of what's going on, but clearly more information is needed. My first psychic suggestion was to examine MFC's message pump to see what causes it to exit. Then follow the money backwards. That's ...

Disaster averted, thanks to international time zones

September 15, 2006 Sep 15, 2006 09/15/06
Raymond Chen
Boy, the world has been really lucky this year. After successfully avoiding a massive tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean, the world narrowly escaped global disaster as predicted by Yisrayl Hawkins, leader of the organization The House of Yahweh. What saved us? Well, I'll let Mosheh Sang, leader of the organization in Kenya, explain: According ...