The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
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Microspeak: Value proposition
This term is used outside Microsoft as well, but it still bothers me. The value proposition is the benefit that the end-user gets from your product, the thing that convinces them to buy it. What makes it even more annoying is when it is abbreviated to value prop. Sample usage: "The main value proposition of this model is that it permits changes to be tracked without imposing a significant burden upon the editors."
Which Windows font is named after a tabloid headline?
Daniel Will-Harris explains the background of several Windows fonts, including the story of where the names for some of the fonts came from. Do you know which Windows font is named after a tabloid headline about aliens? On the topic of font history, the designer of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare, has written a bit on the font's history on Microsoft's typography site, as well as a longer discussion on his personal site.
Nested fly-out menus are a usability nightmare
The Windows Vista Start menu abandoned the flyout model for the "All Programs" menu because nested fly-out menus are a usability nightmare, and not just for novices. Research has shown that once you have menus more than one level deep, you have the problem that the slightly wiggle of the mouse can take the big, complicated menu hierarchy that the user spent enormous attention to build and make it all disappear in a flash. I run into this a lot. "File, Open Multiple, By Searching..." oops I moved my mouse too far upwards and tickled the View menu and boom my menu vanishes and I have to start all over again. Menu ...
Disclaimers and such
Statements made in a general sense may have exceptions even if such exceptions are not explicitly acknowledged. Example: "Dogs have four legs." There are dogs which do not have four legs, but as a general rule, dogs have four legs. Statements are not independently fact-checked. They are based on personal experience and recollection, augmented by informed guesswork. Statements may even be intentionally incorrect for rhetorical purposes, for example, to avoid getting distracted by a side topic, or because it's a joke. Not all quotation marks indicate literal quotation; some may represent an imaginary conversation...
The Northwest Mahler Orchestra presents Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony
Love it or hate it.
Windows Vista has more extended options on the context menu
As we saw when we discussed context menus, holding down the shift key when opening a context menu adds so-called extended verbs to the menu. These are verbs that are less frequently used whose presence would clutter up the menu or pose an attractive nuisance. For example, the "Command Prompt Here" command is an extended command since your typical non-technical user has no use for it,¹ and selecting it creates a baffling command prompt that screams "You are not smart enough to use this computer! Return it to the store and get a Mac instead!" In reaction to this, one person wrote, "I've not seen anyone eve...
At last you can turn off the USB 2.0 balloon
Yes, I know already.
We're all in this together: Maintaining common tools
In the Windows division, as with any other product group, there is a common "bag of tools" that people tend to rely on to get through the day. Occasionally, somebody will encounter a problem with one of these tools. When I run Program Q, I get the message XYZ, and then it appears to get stuck in an infinite loop allocating more and more memory until it finally runs out. Is this a bug? Just a few hours later, the question is repeated. It seems Resending. Is anybody else seeing this? First thing the following morning: 3rd time. The owner of Program Q, please help. At this point, I felt compel...
When you copy a folder, why are the contents merged with the existing contents?
When you use Explorer to copy a folder, and the folder already exists at the destination, Explorer merges the contents of the folder being copied with the folder that is already there. Why was this behavior chosen instead of replacing the existing folder? My colleague Bob Day explains.¹ Nitpicker's Corner ¹Although this statement is written as if it were a fact, the claim that Bob's remarks qualify as an "explanation" is actually my interpretation of his remarks and does not constitute an official position of Microsoft Corporation.