Raymond Chen, Author at The Old New Thing

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Why do some people call the taskbar the "tray"?

September 10th, 2003

Short answer: Because they're wrong. Long answer: The official name for the thingie at the bottom of the screen is the "taskbar". The taskbar contains a variety of elements, such as the "Start Button", a collection of "taskbar buttons", the clock, and the "Taskbar Notification ...

If you see only one Elvis vs. Mummy movie this year, make it this one

September 9th, 2003

Bubba Ho-Tep will be playing at the Varsity Theater in Seattle for a limited run. (Check the release schedule to see if it will be airing in your area.) Be there. Or the mummy will have already won...

Scrollbars part 9 – Maintaining the metaphor

September 9th, 2003

When a document is displayed with scrollbars, the metaphor is that the window is a viewport onto the entire document, only a portion of which is visible at the moment. The default behavior of a resize, however, is to maintain the origin at the upper left corner of the client area, which breaks the metaphor...

It's a lot easier to write a column if you don't care about accuracy

September 8th, 2003

Now that Longhorn Rumor Season seems to have kicked up, I'm reminded of Windows 95 Rumor Season. The great thing about writing a rumors column is that you don't have to be right! Even if you're wrong, you can just say, "Well, Microsoft changed it before they shipped," and nobody can say you were wrong. It'...

An insight into the Windows 95 startup sound

September 8th, 2003

Doo, dudududingggggg.... ding.... ding... ding... In an interview with Joel Selvin at the San Francisco Chronicle, Brian Eno explains. Q: How did you come to compose "The Microsoft Sound"? A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. ...

Where is my program running from?

September 5th, 2003

Another common question: "How do I find out where my program is? I want to be able to access support files in that same directory." Answer: GetModuleFileName(NULL...

Case mapping on Unicode is hard

September 5th, 2003

Occasionally, I'm asked, "I have to identify strings that are identical, case-insensitively. How do I do it?" The answer is, "Well, it depends. Whose case-mapping rules do you want to use?" Sometimes the reply is, "I want this to be language-independent." Now ...

How to recognize different types of timestamps from quite a long way away

September 5th, 2003

The great thing about timestamps is that there are so many to choose from.

Why are the rules for GetWindowText so weird?

September 4th, 2003

Joel Spolsky rightly points out that the rules for GetWindowText exhibit abstraction leakage. Why are the rules for GetWindowText so weird? Set the wayback machine to 1983. Your typical PC had an 8086 processor running at a whopping 4.7MHz, two 360K 5¼-inch floppy drives (or if you...

Why is there no programmatic access to the Start menu pin list?

September 3rd, 2003

We learned our lesson the hard way. In Windows 95, we gave programmatic access to the Start menu "Fast items" list - the items that appear at the top of the Start menu above the Programs list. This area was meant for the user to customize with their favorite links, but programs quickly ...

Raymond Chen

Post by this author

Why do some people call the taskbar the "tray"?

If you see only one Elvis vs. Mummy movie this year, make it this one

Scrollbars part 9 – Maintaining the metaphor

It's a lot easier to write a column if you don't care about accuracy

An insight into the Windows 95 startup sound

Where is my program running from?

Case mapping on Unicode is hard

How to recognize different types of timestamps from quite a long way away

Why are the rules for GetWindowText so weird?

Why is there no programmatic access to the Start menu pin list?

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