The Old New Thing

January 2013 - Page 2 of 3 - The Old New Thing

Microspeak: pivot

January 22, 2013 Jan 22, 2013 01/22/13
Raymond Chen
A great word to use at Microsoft to make it sound like you're one of the cool insiders is pivot. Mostly because the meaning of the word varies from place to place, so you can use it to mean whatever you like while still sounding hip and jargony. In Windows Phone, the term pivot is a technical term which refers to a type of control that lets...

What is this rogue version 1.0 of the HTML clipboard format?

January 18, 2013 Jan 18, 2013 01/18/13
Raymond Chen
At least as of the time this article was originally written, the HTML clipboard format is officially at version 0.9. A customer observed that sometimes they received HTML clipboard data that marked itself as version 1.0 and wanted to know where they could find documentation on that version. As far as I can tell, there is no official ...

A brief history of the GetEnvironmentStrings functions

January 17, 2013 Jan 17, 2013 01/17/13
Raymond Chen
The Get­Environment­Strings function has a long and troubled history. The first bit of confusion is that the day it was introduced in Windows NT 3.1, it was exported funny. The UNICODE version was exported under the name Get­Environment­StringsW, but the ANSI version was exported under the name Get­Environment...

How do I create a TaskDialog with a progress bar but no cancel button?

January 16, 2013 Jan 16, 2013 01/16/13
Raymond Chen
A developer from another group within Microsoft wanted to create a with a progress bar, but they couldn't figure out how to get rid of the Cancel button. "Is there a way to remove all the buttons from a Task Dialog?" Um, users hate it when you give them a window that cannot be closed or cancelled. What should the user do if the ...

If there were some sort of award for alternative commuting, we would’ve been eligible

January 15, 2013 Jan 15, 2013 01/15/13
Raymond Chen
A few projects ago, I worked on a team whose members came to work by a wide variety of modes. If there were some sort of award for alternative commuting, we would've been eligible. One of the full-time telecommuters was based in Spain, which was handy because he was available to deal with issues that cropped up while everybody in Redmond ...

State law requires you to watch this video of a singing hippo

January 14, 2013 Jan 14, 2013 01/14/13
Raymond Chen
I did it briefly a few years ago, but I'm going to make it a regular Monday feature, at least for this year: Blogging my dreams. I dreamed that I was back in my high school English class, and due to some new state law, everybody was required to watch this video of a singing hippo. The hard part was walking four miles to the nearest viewing ...

How can I write a script that finds my top-rated photos?

January 14, 2013 Jan 14, 2013 01/14/13
Raymond Chen
I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep it up, but I'm going to see if I can make Monday "Little Programs" day, where I solve simple problems with little programs. Today's little program is a script that goes through your Pictures folder and picks out your top-rated photos. The key step here is extracting the rating, which goes by the name ...

Understanding errors in classical linking: The delay-load catch-22

January 11, 2013 Jan 11, 2013 01/11/13
Raymond Chen
Wrapping up our week of understanding the classical model for linking, we'll put together all the little pieces we've learned this week to puzzle out a linker problem: The delay-load catch-22. You do some code cleanup, then rebuild your project, and you get LNK4199: /DELAYLOAD:SHLWAPI ignored; no imports found from SHLWAPI What does ...