The Old New Thing

October 2006 - Page 4 of 4 - The Old New Thing

Why does Windows hide keyboard accelerators and focus rectangles by default?

October 5, 2006 Oct 5, 2006 10/5/06
Raymond Chen
The release of Windows 2000 introduced a new setting: "Hide underlined letters for keyboard navigation until I press the Alt key," which defaults on for most Western languages. What's the story behind this setting? I still have the rationale from the user interface designer who introduced this feature. Here's a redacted copy: To ...

If only he'd known to offer to back up their PC instead

October 3, 2006 Oct 3, 2006 10/3/06
Raymond Chen
I love it when two unrelated stories conspire to create amusement beyond what each one provided separately. We start with this report from BoingBoing of a man on Craigslist who offered to perform computer maintenance and repair in exchange for second base. (For those not familar with North American high school sexual slang—and that ...

There's a reason why envelopes have backs

October 3, 2006 Oct 3, 2006 10/3/06
Raymond Chen
For some reason, people are upset that I don't have hard data for the cost difference between "slow" and "fast" mode enumeration. I already did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that showed that fast mode reduces the total time to enumerate the items in a folder from five minutes to two seconds. That's what's so great about back-of-the-...

Any similarity to actual German or Swedish words is purely coincidental

October 2, 2006 Oct 2, 2006 10/2/06
Raymond Chen
Earlier this year, the Advertising Standards Authority (the UK's advertising watchdog) ruled that the use of umlauts in the name of kitchen furniture manufacturer Möben is purely decorative and not intended to mislead consumers into believing that the company is German or Scandinavian. The fact that the name is only one letter away from...

Does a dual-core processor count as one or two for licensing purposes?

October 2, 2006 Oct 2, 2006 10/2/06
Raymond Chen
Now that dual-core processors are gaining in popularity, there has been some confusion over whether a dual-core processor counts as one or two. This discussion of multicore processor licensing may clear things up. The short answer is that a dual-core processor still counts as one processor. For example, Windows XP Professional supports up to...