The Old New Thing

What’s with this MSH_MOUSEWHEEL message?

August 6, 2008 Aug 6, 2008 08/6/08
Raymond Chen
The hardware folks had this mouse wheel thing they were making, and they needed a way to get applications to support the mouse. Now, one way of doing this was to say, "Well, we'll start selling this wheel mouse, but no applications can use it until the next version of Windows is released, one that supports the wheel." Of course, that would ...

Microspeak: The long pole

August 5, 2008 Aug 5, 2008 08/5/08
Raymond Chen
The long pole is the part of the project that is on the critical path due to its length. For example, if you have a project that consists of three independent sub-projects, then the sub-project with the longest completion date is the long pole. The etymology of this term is simultaneously obvious yet hard to pin down. Intuitively, the long ...

Why, when you sort by name, doesn’t it actually sort by name?

August 4, 2008 Aug 4, 2008 08/4/08
Raymond Chen
When you right-click on the desktop or in an Explorer window and select "Sort by... Name", why doesn't it actually sort by name? Because "Sort according to the default sort order for the column whose title is... Name" is too long. The default sort order for the first column (whose name is "Name") is to sort by name, mostly. The actual ...

I warned you: The dangers of attaching input queues

August 1, 2008 Aug 1, 2008 08/1/08
Raymond Chen
Some people didn't take to heart my cautions on the subject of attached input queues, item number five on the list of five things every Win32 programmer should know. And then they find that their application stops responding. // Code in italics is wrong void TryToStealFocus(HWND hwnd) { // First try plain SetForegroundWindow ...

What does each country claim for its own?

July 30, 2008 Jul 30, 2008 07/30/08
Raymond Chen
One of the things that fascinates me is how each country's view of history is clouded by its own chauvinism. I was reminded of this when researchers were able to reconstruct the original recording from a phonautograph which predated Edison's phonograph, thereby adding another claim to the mix of who invented sound recording. I think the ...

Be careful what you name your mailing list

July 29, 2008 Jul 29, 2008 07/29/08
Raymond Chen
Some time ago, I recommended exercising caution when choosing the name for your product group. The same caution applies to the name of your mailing list. Thanks to the large number of spammers out there, creating a mailling list whose account name is a word from the dictionary is just asking for trouble. When you create a new mailing list ...