The Old New Thing

August 2007 - Page 2 of 5 - The Old New Thing

Microspeak: Value proposition

August 24, 2007 Aug 24, 2007 08/24/07
Raymond Chen
This term is used outside Microsoft as well, but it still bothers me. The value proposition is the benefit that the end-user gets from your product, the thing that convinces them to buy it. What makes it even more annoying is when it is abbreviated to value prop. Sample usage: "The main value proposition of this model is that it permits ...

Which Windows font is named after a tabloid headline?

August 23, 2007 Aug 23, 2007 08/23/07
Raymond Chen
Daniel Will-Harris explains the background of several Windows fonts, including the story of where the names for some of the fonts came from. Do you know which Windows font is named after a tabloid headline about aliens? On the topic of font history, the designer of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare, has written a bit on the font's history on ...

Nested fly-out menus are a usability nightmare

August 23, 2007 Aug 23, 2007 08/23/07
Raymond Chen
The Windows Vista Start menu abandoned the flyout model for the "All Programs" menu because nested fly-out menus are a usability nightmare, and not just for novices. Research has shown that once you have menus more than one level deep, you have the problem that the slightly wiggle of the mouse can take the big, complicated menu hierarchy that...

Disclaimers and such

August 22, 2007 Aug 22, 2007 08/22/07
Raymond Chen
Statements made in a general sense may have exceptions even if such exceptions are not explicitly acknowledged. Example: "Dogs have four legs." There are dogs which do not have four legs, but as a general rule, dogs have four legs. Statements are not independently fact-checked. They are based on personal experience and recollection, augmented...

Windows Vista has more extended options on the context menu

August 22, 2007 Aug 22, 2007 08/22/07
Raymond Chen
As we saw when we discussed context menus, holding down the shift key when opening a context menu adds so-called extended verbs to the menu. These are verbs that are less frequently used whose presence would clutter up the menu or pose an attractive nuisance. For example, the "Command Prompt Here" command is an extended command since your ...

We're all in this together: Maintaining common tools

August 21, 2007 Aug 21, 2007 08/21/07
Raymond Chen
In the Windows division, as with any other product group, there is a common "bag of tools" that people tend to rely on to get through the day. Occasionally, somebody will encounter a problem with one of these tools. When I run Program Q, I get the message XYZ, and then it appears to get stuck in an infinite loop allocating more and more ...

When you copy a folder, why are the contents merged with the existing contents?

August 20, 2007 Aug 20, 2007 08/20/07
Raymond Chen
When you use Explorer to copy a folder, and the folder already exists at the destination, Explorer merges the contents of the folder being copied with the folder that is already there. Why was this behavior chosen instead of replacing the existing folder? My colleague Bob Day explains.¹ Nitpicker's Corner ¹Although this statement...