The Old New Thing

The day shell.windows.com went down

January 14, 2009 Jan 14, 2009 01/14/09
Raymond Chen
When the file association Web service was first being developed, the programmer responsible for implementing the feature just scrounged around and found an old unused computer and set it up as a simple Web server under his desk, so there would be something to test the code against. That server happily churned away serving out file extension ...

Excessive speed appeared to be a factor in the crash

January 13, 2009 Jan 13, 2009 01/13/09
Raymond Chen
In February 2007, a serious automobile accident took place in southwest Washington. A twelve-year-old boy was at the wheel of an SUV when he lost control and struck another vehicle. According to the sheriff's office, "Excessive speed appeared to be a factor in the crash." I dunno, I think a major factor is that a twelve-year-old was behind ...

Where does shell.windows.com get information about file extensions, and how do I get in on that action?

January 13, 2009 Jan 13, 2009 01/13/09
Raymond Chen
If you double-click a file for which there is no registered handler, Windows will offer to visit the Web service on shell.windows.com to locate a program that can open it. But where does this information come from, and how can you add your program to the database? Knowledge Base article Q929149, titled Windows File Association System On-...

How does PostQuitMessage know which thread to post the quit message to?

January 12, 2009 Jan 12, 2009 01/12/09
Raymond Chen
Commenter bav016 asks how functions like and know which thread the messages should go to. Unlike some functions such as which have a window handle parameter that lets you say which window you want to operate on, and don't say which thread the or message should go to. How do they decide? The messages go to the current thread; that is...

It’s surprising how suddenly those new skins started pouring in

January 9, 2009 Jan 9, 2009 01/9/09
Raymond Chen
A friend of mine told me a story of a project from over ten years ago. Part of the product design was that it would include a bunch of skins (visual styles). The development team had written up the skinning infrastructure, but the company which was hired to create the actual skins hadn't delivered anything. My friend's assignment was to test ...

The programmers don’t design skins; they just make skins possible

January 8, 2009 Jan 8, 2009 01/8/09
Raymond Chen
Not all skill sets are interchangeable. That's why we have concepts like division of labor and specialization. But it appears that not everybody understands this. I was reminded of this topic when I read the reactions to the Microsoft Exchange Team announcing that they had added Xbox and Zune themes to OWA. Many people were shocked, such ...

Raymond misreads flyers: A Taste of WWL

January 7, 2009 Jan 7, 2009 01/7/09
Raymond Chen
There were flyers in our building inviting people to attend a food event called A Taste of WWL. The letters WWL stand for Windows and Windows Live, but the font they chose for the sign was confusing to me. The capital L looked like a capital I, and I misread the poster as an invitation to attend A Taste of WWI. And then I thought, "Who ...

Microspeak: Learnings

January 6, 2009 Jan 6, 2009 01/6/09
Raymond Chen
If things you teach are teachings, then things you learn must be learnings, right? Good Microspeak citations for this word are hard to find since the word is rarely used in a sentence; it's just a heading in a slide presentation. I found dozens of presentations that had a slide titled Learnings from XYZ, or, for those who want to sound really ...