The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
Qrystal does more research into those spam blogs
Blogger Qrystal got hit with blog trackback spam and did research into the phenomenon, even discovering the author trying to sell the spam blog. And he had to cut the price because Google AdSense has cut him off. Ha, ha, haaahhhhh~! (Read the blog entry for the spammer's for-sale offers and other linkity goodness.)
Why is there sometimes a half-second delay between the click and the action?
There are places in the user interface where you may click to perform an action, but the action doesn't actually take place until a half second later. Why is there a half-second delay? Because it's waiting to see if the user is on the way to a double-click. Some users simply double-click everything in sight, and depending on what the single click action is, this may or may not be a problem. If the click launches a modal dialog, then the second click is mostly harmless because the modal dialog appears on the same thread group as the window that received the stray second click. When that thread group next ...
A simple bar chart on letter distribution
I was visiting a colleague's office in another building and I spotted a whiteboard on which the following enigmatic bar chart was drawn. The source data for the analysis was left unspecified. It looks like there's an entire Web site devoted to profound charts like this. For example, a graph of beer bottle distribution as a function of the number of bottles taken down and passed around. When I showed this Web site to one of my friends, he responded, "Oh, great, now I'm not going to get anything done for a week and it's all your fault." Unfortunately, the charts on graphjam appear to have diverged in re...
What kind of uncle am I?
The terminology of family relationships.
The Start menu pin list is just a list of items; there’s no magic
Commenter Kevin Dente asks, "Is it possible to put a folder on the Start Menu Pin list and have it cascade?" No. The last time I checked (which was back in Windows XP), the Start menu pin list was a list, not a menu. (Specifically, a list view in tile mode.) When you click on the icon, it launches. There is no code to say "Oh, if this flag is set, then let me draw a little menu arrow next to the item, and if the user clicks the arrow, bind to the target of this shortcut, enumerate its contents, and create a menu from it." Remember, features don't exist by default; somebody has to implement them.
No, we’re not nerds, why do you ask?
Last year, to celebrate successful completion of a project milestone, our group went on a "cultural expedition" to a glass-blowing studio where we were to learn about the craft of glass blowing and even do some of it ourselves. (By the way, it was fun.) One of the glassblowers had been making a lot of little jokes about Frodo and Mount Doom. Working with molten glass does that to a person, I guess. When it came time to break up into smaller groups, each working with a different glassblower, the Tolkein-obsessed glassblower announced, "Okay, let's do it this way. Lord of the Ring fans on this side of the room, S...
Fashion is something that can be acquired by looking at lots of different fashions
Actress Brenda Dickson teaches us how to be awesome. Update: Apparently that video link died within days of my finding it, but there are plenty of other copies floating around the Intertubes. Here's one of many series on YouTube: Part 1 (Fashion), Part 2 (Make-Up), Part 3 (Exercise). and Part 4 (Diet and Nutrition),
Why are there two values for PSH_WIZARD97?
Welcome, Slashdot readers. Remember, this Web site is for entertainment purposes only. If you go cruising through the commctrl.h header file, you'll find that there are two different definitions for PSH_WIZARD97: #if (_WIN32_IE >= 0x0400) ... #if (_WIN32_IE < 0x0500) #define PSH_WIZARD97 0x00002000 #else #define PSH_WIZARD97 0x01000000 #endif ... Why are there two values for PSH_WIZARD97? Set the wayback machine to 1997. (Note: Dates are approximate.) The user interface design team studied how Windows 95 wizards have been faring and have begun using what they've learned t...
If you can’t find the statistics you want, then just make them up
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported on America's Newest Profession: Bloggers for Hire and included this handy little chart: I found this number hard to believe, so I followed the Source link to the information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I found that, yup, in a May 2007 survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were indeed 555,770 lawyers, 394,710 computer programmers, 299,160 chief executives, and 289,710 fire fighters in the United States. Bloggers? Didn't even make the list. The number 452,000 appears nowhere in the Bureau of Labor Statistics report. If you can't f...