February 23rd, 2016

Why does the date disappear from my taskbar, sometimes?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

A customer reported that the date vanished from their taskbar, but it was there yesterday. They included a screen shot, which showed a vertically-docked taskbar on a Chinese system, and the clock showed simply “10:50”. The customer sent the message on October 10.

I used my psychic powers to debug the problem. Maybe you can too.

(Time passes.)

The problem is that the date is October 10, or “10月10日”. Yesterday was “10月9日”. What’s so special about “10月10日” compared to “10月9日”?

It’s one character longer.

The user resized their taskbar so that there was room to show “10月9日”, but not enough room to show “10月10日”.

The customer experimented by changing the date, and they confirmed that the date vanishes whenever you are in October, November, or December, and the day of the month is 10 or higher.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Tips/Support

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

0 comments

Discussion are closed.

Read next