The Old New Thing

Thread affinity of user interface objects, part 2: Device contexts

October 11, 2005 Oct 11, 2005 10/11/05
Raymond Chen
Last time, we discussed briefly the thread affinity rules that govern window handles. Device contexts (DCs) also have a certain degree of thread affinity. The thread that calls functions such as must also be the one that calls , but as with window handles, during the lifetime of the DC, any thread can use it. If you choose to use a DC in ...

The difficult balancing act between customization and supportability

October 10, 2005 Oct 10, 2005 10/10/05
Raymond Chen
My colleague Kam VedBrat (from who I shamelessly stole the pictures of thse high-DPI displays in my PDC talk) discusses the difficult balancing act between customization and supportability. (Part II.) Note that decisions on this subject also also impact compatibility: Windows Vista greatly expands the palette of objects covered by the ...

Thread affinity of user interface objects, part 1: Window handles

October 10, 2005 Oct 10, 2005 10/10/05
Raymond Chen
Different objects have different thread affinity rules, but the underlying principles come from 16-bit Windows. The most important user interface element is of course the window. Window objects have thread affinity. The thread that creates a window is the one with which the window has an inseparable relationship. Informally, one says that ...

On the dangers of sharing your apartment

October 7, 2005 Oct 7, 2005 10/7/05
Raymond Chen
My colleague Marc Miller wrote up a brief essay on the subject of dealing with a neutral apartment that has been injected into your single-threaded apartment: COMmunism: Sharing your Apartment. Highly recommended...

Your profiling tools can manufacture performance issues where there were none

October 7, 2005 Oct 7, 2005 10/7/05
Raymond Chen
When analyzing the performance of a program, you must be mindful that your performance analysis tools can themselves affect the operation of the system you are analyzing. This is especially true if the performance analysis tool is running on the same computer as the program being studied. People often complain that Explorer takes a page ...

Jensen Harris joins the 7am club

October 6, 2005 Oct 6, 2005 10/6/05
Raymond Chen
My colleague Jensen Harris from the Office User Interface team has joined the 7am club, posting fascinating glimpes into Office history and the upcoming version of Office code-named "Office 12". And they come out at 7am every weekday. Then again, maybe he's not real either. Maybe he's some kind of a robot...

My history of time is briefer than yours

October 5, 2005 Oct 5, 2005 10/5/05
Raymond Chen
In 1999, Eric Schulman published A Briefer History of Time, based upon his previous effort to capture the history of the universe in 200 words. The book takes the initial 200-word summary and expands upon each phrase, surreptitiously teaching you some science among the jokes. (You can even watch a video.) And then this Hawking guy shows ...

Running old programs in a virtual machine doesn’t necessarily create a good user experience

October 5, 2005 Oct 5, 2005 10/5/05
Raymond Chen
Many people suggest solving the backwards compatibility problem by merely running old programs in a virtual machine. This only solves part of the problem. Sure, you can take a recalcitrant program and run it in a virtual machine, with its own display, its own hard drive, its own keyboard, etc. But there are very few types of programs (games ...

Katamari Damacy: The most screwed-up video game ever

October 4, 2005 Oct 4, 2005 10/4/05
Raymond Chen
As I already noted, I went down to Los Angeles a few days before the PDC to spend time with friends and relatives. I stayed with a cousin who works for a major video game manufacturer, and his boss gave him a homework assignment: He was told to go home and play a specific video game. (Unfortunately, it wasn't a particularly good video game, ...