The Old New Thing

September 2009 - Page 2 of 4 - The Old New Thing

We accept cash, credit cards, and Microsoft cardkeys

September 21, 2009 Sep 21, 2009 09/21/09
Raymond Chen
One of the restaurants that opened at the new Microsoft Commons is Spitfire, which opened under its own name instead of one of the many wonderful alternatives proposed. At The Commons, the dining establishments operate in a variety of ways (cafeteria, buffet, fast casual, deli, etc.) but they share the common characteristic that you pay for ...

What is the logic behind the thumb size and position calculation in scroll bars?

September 21, 2009 Sep 21, 2009 09/21/09
Raymond Chen
Commenter sarathc asks, "How do we implement a custom scroll bar as Windows does? What is the logic behind the thumb size and position calculation? How we could dynamically manage it?" Let's look at the three questions in turn. To implement a custom scroll bar... don't do it. It's just not worth the effort, and there will almost always be ...
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Windows 95's ticking death

September 18, 2009 Sep 18, 2009 09/18/09
Raymond Chen
A few years ago, Larry Osterman explained the famous beeping death. Windows 95 had its own noise-related death, what nobody has called ticking death, but that's what I'm going to call it. (Let's see how long before somebody decide to add it to Wikipedia.) When your machine fell into ticking death, each time you moved the mouse or ...

Should I fix the spelling in the United States Constitution?

September 17, 2009 Sep 17, 2009 09/17/09
Raymond Chen
Commenter Dave jokingly remarked, "I've grown used to handling characters with ASCII. (If it was good enough to represent every character in the US Constitution, it's good enough for me.)" But there's a double-joke in there. You see, not every character in the United States Constitution can be represented in ASCII! If you take a close look...

Crazy Eddie: His prices were insane because it was all a criminal operation

September 15, 2009 Sep 15, 2009 09/15/09
Raymond Chen
If you lived in the New York metropolitan area in the 1980's, you couldn't avoid the advertisements for electronics store Crazy Eddie. What I didn't realize until now was that the retail establishment was a criminal operation from day one. Sam Antar, Crazy Eddie CFO, and nephew of company namesake Eddie Antar, talks us through the entire ...

Why does the Start menu search box autoselect some items but not others?

September 15, 2009 Sep 15, 2009 09/15/09
Raymond Chen
When you open the Start menu and type into the search box, sometimes the first search result is autoselected (so you just have to hit Enter), whereas sometimes See more results is autoselected. Is there a method to this madness? If an item is found in the Programs and Control Panel sections, then the first such is autoselected. Otherwise, ...

A complex family calculus

September 14, 2009 Sep 14, 2009 09/14/09
Raymond Chen
I spent the other night at a relative's house, and I was woken the next morning by my young niece who politely asked me to make her breakfast. (Her technique for waking me up is to come in and call my name. If the door is closed, she pounds on the bedroom door and shouts, "Wake up! Wake up!" If I fail to open the door, she opens it herself. If...

Can you create an information context for the display?

September 14, 2009 Sep 14, 2009 09/14/09
Raymond Chen
Adrian McCarthy asks, "Can you create an information context for the display? ... I can call CreateDC("DISPLAY"), but perhaps that wouldn't generalize for a multiple-monitor display with different settings on each screen. I'm trying to avoid constantly creating and destroying DCs when all I need to do is measure strings, check color depth, dpi...
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