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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Varför läser jag svenska?

May 12th, 2004
(Even if you don't read Swedish, you may enjoy the links at the end.) Några personer har frågat mig varför jag läser svenska. Historien börjar för många år sedan. Jag läste tidningen och såg att det fanns avgiftsfria norskalektioner i Ballard kyrkans källaren. (Ballard är...

Is your web site an open relay?

May 12th, 2004
As if there isn't enough to worry about. Everyone knows about the dangers of open SMTP relays. But how many people realize the dangers of an open HTTP relay? Many web sites do arbitrary redirection. If I were a spammer, I could create a link to myself that redirects through some well-known web sites, thereby granting my spam link ...

Links about COM threading models

May 11th, 2004
There have been a few good articles about threading models, one from Eric Lippert and another from Larry Osterman. Go off and read them if you haven't already...

How do the FILE_SHARE_* bits interact with the desired access bits?

May 11th, 2004
It's really not that complicated. If you permit, say, , then you're saying, "I'm okay with other people reading this file while I have it open." And if you leave off the flag, then you're saying, "I do not want other people reading this file while I have it open." Now all that's left to do is work out what that means. So suppose you ...

There are two types of scrollbars

May 10th, 2004
Remember that there are two types of scrollbars. One is the standalone scrollbar control. This one has its own window handle, and consequently can be given focus and all those other fun things you can do with window handles. To manipulate them, pass the handle to the scrollbar control to the appropriate scrollbar function (...

A guide to British pub etiquette

May 10th, 2004
Social researchers dissect the interactions and unveil the unwritten rules that govern British pub etiquette...

Image File Execution Options

May 7th, 2004
Hereby incorporating by reference Junfeng Zhang's discussion of the Image File Execution Options registry key...

When should your destructor be virtual?

May 7th, 2004
When should your C++ object's destructor be virtual? First of all, what does it mean to have a virtual destructor? Well, what does it mean to have a virtual method? If a method is virtual, then calling the method on an object always invokes the method as implemented by the most heavily derived class. If the method is not virtual, then the ...

Batman and Robin patrolling Whitley

May 7th, 2004
Batman and Robin have been spotted in Whitley, providing valuable services like rescuing damsels in distress (pushing her car to the nearest petrol station), scaring away potential muggers, and even chasing streakers off a football pitch...

Chris Pratley's history lesson

May 6th, 2004
If you haven't read it yet, check out Chris Pratley's voluminous discourse on various aspects of the history of Word. It packs more history into one entry than I do all year. And that was a sequel! You can read the first half, too. In fact, the good stuff keeps on coming. just read it all...