The Old New Thing

The Old New Thing

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 25 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 currently appears regularly on MSDN Channel 9’s One Dev Minute channel in the One Dev Question video series.

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How can I tell whether the user has disabled toast notifications for my app?

How can I tell whether the user has disabled toast notifications for my app?

August 10th, 2020

The ToastNotifier settings will tell you.

How do I make my accelerators apply only when used in the main window and not when the user is using a modeless dialog?

How do I make my accelerators apply only when used in the main window and not when the user is using a modeless dialog?

August 7th, 2020

Sometimes you feel like an accelerator table, sometimes you don't.

What was so horrible about the FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER flag that the Windows Store disallowed it for so long?

What was so horrible about the FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER flag that the Windows Store disallowed it for so long?

August 6th, 2020

Letting in the riffraff.

What does it mean when it says that FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER can be used in Store apps starting in Windows 10?

What does it mean when it says that FORMAT_MESSAGE_ALLOCATE_BUFFER can be used in Store apps starting in Windows 10?

August 5th, 2020

What happens if you use it anyway?

How can CharUpper and CharLower guarantee that the uppercase version of a string is the same length as the lowercase version?

How can CharUpper and CharLower guarantee that the uppercase version of a string is the same length as the lowercase version?

August 4th, 2020

Does it have a special under-the-table deal with the Unicode Consortium?

Peeking inside the implementation of AnsiUpper and AnsiLower in Windows 1.0

Peeking inside the implementation of AnsiUpper and AnsiLower in Windows 1.0

August 3rd, 2020

Some retro-reverse-engineering and the weird micro-optimizations.

What does the /ALTERNATENAME linker switch do?

What does the /ALTERNATENAME linker switch do?

July 31st, 2020

In case of emergency, go look for something else.

What’s the deal with OLDNAMES.LIB?

What’s the deal with OLDNAMES.LIB?

July 30th, 2020

For backward compatibility with pre-standard C.

C++/WinRT gotcha: Setting properties incorrectly

C++/WinRT gotcha: Setting properties incorrectly

July 29th, 2020

A bit too much search/replace during porting.

A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS

A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS

July 28th, 2020

Ways of dealing with the fractured address space.