The Old New Thing

Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.

Latest posts

Nov 29, 2024
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Assessing the attack complexity of a race condition security vulnerability

Raymond Chen

It's not just how small the race window is, but how easy it is to hit the window.

Nov 28, 2024
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Why does my program successfully take foreground only when running under the debugger?

Raymond Chen

That's a special exception to the normal foreground rules.

Nov 27, 2024
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Checking whether a URI refers to a Web site root

Raymond Chen

Let somebody else do the parsing.

Nov 26, 2024
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Microspeak: Real estate and Airspace

Raymond Chen

Space on the screen and negotiating control over it.

Nov 25, 2024
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How can I know when a window has processed a message that I posted to it?

Raymond Chen

Best would be to have it tell you.

Nov 22, 2024
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In C++, how can I make a default parameter be the this pointer of the caller?, revisited

Raymond Chen

Expanding on the previous pattern.

Nov 21, 2024
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How can I detect which menu my item was invoked from?

Raymond Chen

Just give them all different IDs. But this might itself by an XY problem.

Nov 20, 2024
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How do I determine whether Explorer is showing or hiding file extensions?

Raymond Chen

You can ask, but maybe you're asking the wrong question.

Nov 19, 2024
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A wrinkle in how Windows 95 setup bootstrapped its initial GUI step

Raymond Chen

Getting access to the common controls that don't exist until Windows 95.