The Old New Thing

July 2007 - Page 3 of 5 - The Old New Thing

Not my finest hour: Driving a manual transmission

July 17, 2007 Jul 17, 2007 07/17/07
Raymond Chen
Sara Ford messed up her leg last month; you can see her on ScooterCam-1 at TechEd 2007. The best part of the name ScooterCam-1 isn't the ScooterCam; it's the 1. That just gives it that extra little kitchy space technology feel that turns a good name into a great name. Anyway, she asked around if somebody with a car with an automatic ...

How are window manager handles determined in Windows NT?

July 17, 2007 Jul 17, 2007 07/17/07
Raymond Chen
We left off our story last time by raising the problem of programs that send messages to windows that have already been destroyed and how window handle re-use exacerbates the problem. Although this is clearly a bug in the programs that use window handles after destroying the window, the problem is so widespread that the window manager folks in...

Creative armed robbery defense: Political asylum

July 16, 2007 Jul 16, 2007 07/16/07
Raymond Chen
Step 1: Rob bank. Step 2: Flee the country. Step 3: Claim political asylum because the robbery was a form of political protest. It's creative, I have to grant you that. The theory is that Canadian law prohibits extradition for political crimes. Though it's a strange defense to say "If I did it, it was politically ...

How are window manager handles determined in 16-bit Windows and Windows 95?

July 16, 2007 Jul 16, 2007 07/16/07
Raymond Chen
(Prefatory remark: The following information is of the "behind the scenes" nature and does not constitute formal documentation. Actually, nothing I write counts as formal documentation, so I shouldn't have needed to write that, but people sometimes intentionally play stupid and interpret all forms of the future tense as if I were making some ...

The dangers of conversation fragments: Overheard on the Burke-Gilman trail

July 13, 2007 Jul 13, 2007 07/13/07
Raymond Chen
This past weekend, a group of us went on one last training ride before the STP, which begins tomorrow. The Burke-Gilman is a multipurpose trail, with bicyclists sharing the path with walkers, joggers, inline skaters, sometimes even people on horseback. (Inline nitpicker's corner: The horseback riders are on the Sammamish River Trail, which is...

I was sort of interested at first, but now I'm not so sure any more

July 13, 2007 Jul 13, 2007 07/13/07
Raymond Chen
Some time ago, there was a product under development that was starting to get some buzz, so I thought I'd go check it out. I went to the product's Web site, but the product was so new that they didn't have any substantial information available. The only way to learn about the product was to download the documentation. And before they would let...

Seattle street signs for sale, used, but for ten bucks you can't complain

July 12, 2007 Jul 12, 2007 07/12/07
Raymond Chen
The city of Seattle has begun a nine-year program of upgrading its street signs, and the city has decided to make the old signs available to the public for purchase. When you see the signs on your street replaced, you can go to the Buy a Sign page to buy the old one. It looks like signs in average condition are going for $10, whereas signs in...

If you want a modeless dialog, then create a modeless dialog already

July 12, 2007 Jul 12, 2007 07/12/07
Raymond Chen
Somebody I'd never heard of sent me email with a general programming question. (This is one of the top ways of instantly making me not interested in talking to you.) I have a modal dialog box which I hide with ShowWindow(SW_HIDE), and I want to enable the parent window so the parent window will get focus and keyboard input. Is this possible...
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How to check for errors from SetFilePointer

July 11, 2007 Jul 11, 2007 07/11/07
Raymond Chen
The SetFilePointer function reports an error in two different ways, depending on whether you passed NULL as the lpDistanceToMoveHigh parameter. The documentation in MSDN is correct, but I've discovered that people prefer when I restate the same facts in a different way, so here comes the tabular version of the documentation. If ...
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