The Old New Thing

Why are there two copies of Notepad?

March 28, 2006 Mar 28, 2006 03/28/06
Raymond Chen
You may have noticed that there's a copy of Notepad in and another in . Why two? Compatibility, of course. Windows 3.0 put Notepad in the Windows directory. Windows NT put it in the System32 directory. Notepad is perhaps the most commonly hardcoded program in Windows. many Setup programs use it to view the Readme file, and you ...

Why doesn't the window manager just take over behavior that used to be within the application's purview?

March 27, 2006 Mar 27, 2006 03/27/06
Raymond Chen
A commenter named "Al" wondered why the window manager couldn't just take over behavior that used to be within the application's purview, such as painting the non-client area, in order to avoid problems with applications not responding to messages promptly enough. If the window manager were being rewritten, then perhaps it could. But to do it...

The simplified office

March 24, 2006 Mar 24, 2006 03/24/06
Raymond Chen
In response to my description of my own office, my colleague Colin Birge shared this anecdote about one Microsoft employee who took office simplification about as far it could go: He was one of the earliest usability specialists in Office, later to become the usability manager before ultimately retiring. As befits a person of seniority, ...

Where technology names came from: WiFi and FireWire

March 23, 2006 Mar 23, 2006 03/23/06
Raymond Chen
Phil Belanger tells the story behind the name WiFi (and it is not short for "Wireless Fidelity"). Meanwhile, Michael Johas Teener tells the story of where the name FireWire came from. (Scroll down to "Why all these names?") [9:30am - I originally had a link to a NY Times article, but it was the wrong article and I can't find the right one...

Before you develop a solution, make sure you really understand the problem

March 23, 2006 Mar 23, 2006 03/23/06
Raymond Chen
A common obstacle when trying to help people solve their problems is that what people ask for and what they actually want are not always the same thing. For technical problems, you often get a question that makes you shake your head in disbelief, but upon closer questioning, you find that the person really doesn't want what they're asking for...

Solving one problem by creating a bigger problem

March 22, 2006 Mar 22, 2006 03/22/06
Raymond Chen
Often, people will not even realize that their solution to a problem merely replaces it with another problem. The quip attributed to Jamie Zawinski captures the sentiment: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now they have two problems. For example, in response to "How do I write a ...

On the alert for expired food-handling licenses

March 21, 2006 Mar 21, 2006 03/21/06
Raymond Chen
Since the lines at warehouse-style stores are always ridiculously long, I like to pass the time by checking out the legally required postings of food-handling and related licenses. Usually, two or three of their licenses have expired. It could be their seafood license, or their raw meat license, or their bakery license, it's always a surprise ...

Why doesn't Windows File Protection use ACLs to protect files?

March 21, 2006 Mar 21, 2006 03/21/06
Raymond Chen
Windows File Protection works by replacing files after they have been overwritten. Why didn't Windows just apply ACLs to deny write permission to the files? We tried that. It didn't work. Programs expect to be able to overwrite the files. A program's setup would run and it decided that it needed to "update" some system file and attempt to ...