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.

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The dialog class goes under the sneaky name WC_DIALOG

August 31st, 2006
An anonymous commenter wanted to know how to create a dialog box with . The window class for dialog boxes is . I'm not quite sure why anybody would want to create a dialog box this way, but there you have it...

How do you wash soap?

August 30th, 2006
Steve Makofsky wondered, "How do you throw out a garbage can?". Along similar lines, I always wondered how you washed soap...

If you work at a company, it's not your computer any more

August 30th, 2006
My posting a while back on solving one problem by creating a bigger problem was written from the standpoint of an IT department doing something like tweaking a logon script. I even mentioned that context partway through but clearly didn't highlight it clearly enough. So say you're an IT department and somebody says, "Oh, just install this ...

As I recall, Germany did not ratify the United States Constitution

August 29th, 2006
I remember reading a news report on a court case wherein the defendant claimed protection under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. An interesting angle, especially since the case was being tried in Germany under German law. I may be wrong, but it is my impression that Germany did not ratify the United States Constitution. ...

How did "Start Me Up" become the theme for the Windows 95 launch?

August 28th, 2006
Add this to your trivia pile. Keith Combs links to a pair of articles that that go into the history behind how Start Me Up become the theme for the Windows 95 launch. Part 1, Part 2...

Try to avoid having BOOL function parameters

August 28th, 2006
Generally speaking, I believe that you should try to avoid giving functions a boolean parameter (, , etc.) unless the meaning of that boolean parameter is blatantly obvious. Examples of obvious meaning would be the second parameter to the function ( obviously means the window is being enabled and means that it's being disabled) and the final...

We know it's insecure, but we want to do it anyway

August 25th, 2006
I remember a question from somebody who asked, paraphrasing: We're writing a secure screen saver that the user can interact with. We're going to present the user with various types of information, and if they click on a hot link, we want to launch a web page on their desktop once the user unlocks the workstation. We know it's insecure, but we...

Moving a file does not recalculate inherited permissions

August 24th, 2006
Inherited permissions are established at creation.

Those folks from Birmingham talk funny, and I mean that in a scientific way

August 24th, 2006
In celebration of their tenth birthday, the Paramount Comedy Channel in the UK commissioned a study on how regional accents affect perceived funniness, and the conclusion was that people from Birmingham have the funniest accents. The Received Pronunciation, which is the only British accent most people in the United States are familiar with...

Environment variable expansion occurs when the command is read

August 23rd, 2006
On the command line (and in batch files), environment variable expansion occurs when the command is read. This sounds obvious at first, but it has its own consequences. In the online documentation for , one such consequence is spelled out: would never display the message, since the in both "" statements is substituted when the first "" ...