The Old New Thing

July 2010 - Page 2 of 3 - The Old New Thing

No, you can't lock a gadget to the top of the sidebar

July 21, 2010 Jul 21, 2010 07/21/10
Raymond Chen
In another installment of I bet somebody got a really nice bonus for that feature, I offer you this customer: My customer has created a Windows Vista sidebar gadget and wants to know if there's a way to force this gadget to appear at the top of the sidebar and prevent the user from moving or removing it. I applaud this company for having ...

Suggestion Box 4

July 20, 2010 Jul 20, 2010 07/20/10
Raymond Chen
The topic backlog from Suggestion Box 3 has nearly cleared out, and I've actually been enjoying not having to write up a reply every Monday for the past several months, but all good things must come to an end, and so, without much fanfare, we now have Suggestion Box 4. Remember, the suggestion box is for suggestions for future ...

Management-speak: Multi-perspective content

July 20, 2010 Jul 20, 2010 07/20/10
Raymond Chen
A colleague of mine visited an internal Web site for task ABC and found that the site was no longer there. Instead it was replaced with a simple message: Designed with the user in mind you will now find contextual ABC and DEF information served up in a secure format alongside all GHI information. Access to relevant multi-perspective ...

To enable and disable a window, use the EnableWindow function

July 19, 2010 Jul 19, 2010 07/19/10
Raymond Chen
Commenter Chris 'Xenon' Hanson points out that fiddling with the WS_DISABLED style directly via Set­Window­Long leads to strange behavior. However it isn't the case that "most widget classes work fine." Reaching in and fiddling the style bit directly is like reaching into a program's internal variables and just changing the values: ...
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How do I launch the Explorer Search window with specific search criteria?

July 16, 2010 Jul 16, 2010 07/16/10
Raymond Chen
A customer wanted to know how to launch Explorer's Search window with specific fixed search criteria. It turns out that there are two ways of doing this, the poor man's way and the overachiever's way. The overachiever's way is actually easier to discover. You can use the search-ms protocol to generate a command string that describes the ...
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There's always the low-tech way of managing a process, too

July 15, 2010 Jul 15, 2010 07/15/10
Raymond Chen
One of my colleagues had a problem with content management. I've changed the underlying scenario but the principle is the same. Is there a way to require that someone other than the author of a proposal sign off before the proposal tracking system accepts it? We had an issue where somebody wrote up a proposal, and due to a miscommunication, ...

Why don't all the Control Panel applications show up when you open a menu from the address bar?

July 14, 2010 Jul 14, 2010 07/14/10
Raymond Chen
One of the features added to the Explorer Address Bar in Windows Vista is the ability to navigate quickly to an item by clicking on its name, or navigate to a folder's children by clicking the arrow that appears next to the item and selecting your destination. One customer reported that there appeared to be a problem with the Control Panel: ...

What is the cost of WS_CLIPSIBLINGS if the sibling windows don't overlap?

July 12, 2010 Jul 12, 2010 07/12/10
Raymond Chen
Commenter Robert May asks via the Suggestion Box whether there is a penalty to pay for using WS_CLIP­SIBLINGS when the sibling windows are not overlapping. When you use the WS_CLIP­SIBLINGS style, the window manager clips out the portion of the client rectangle that is covered by sibling windows. This is usually desirable behavior; ...

What's the difference between LastWriteTime and ChangeTime in FILE_BASIC_INFO?

July 9, 2010 Jul 9, 2010 07/9/10
Raymond Chen
The FILE_BASIC_INFO structure contains a number of fields which record the last time a particular action occurred. Two of the fields seem to describe the same thing. Last­Write­Time The time the file was last written to. Change­Time The time the file was changed. What's the difference between writing to a file and changing ...
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