The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
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More Start menu fine-tuning: Choosing a better representative for a frequently-run program
If you paid really close attention to the way a representative shortcut is selected for a program, you may have noticed a problem with it. Here's the rule again: If there are multiple shortcuts to the same program, then the most-frequently-used shortcut is selected as the one to appear on the front page of the Start menu. Suppose there are two shortcuts to Notepad on the All Programs section of the Start menu, one is the standard Notepad shortcut that comes with Windows, and the other is a shortcut whose command line is . Now suppose the user opens a text document on the desktop. Notepad runs, it "earns a po...
I'm pretty sure he's going to be the envy of his next school reunion
Masi Oka has pretty much everything the dorky nerd geek has ever dreamed of. Right out of college, he lands a job at Industrial Light and Magic doing digital effects, developing complex algorithms for water and other fluid effects seen in movies like The Perfect Storm. That'd already be enough to make him the hit of his next school reunion. And then he scores a major role in the television series Heroes as a, well, dorky nerd geek. But one with a super power. Now at his next school reunion, he's going to be mobbed by people who wouldn't even give him the time of day when he was in school. But wait, there's mo...
What is the impact on the Start menu of long-running programs?
Let's take another look at the basic principle that determines which programs show up in the Start menu: Each time you launch a program, it "earns a point", and the longer you don't launch a program, the more points it loses. If you stare at this long enough, you might see a hole in this principle: What about a program that you launch once and keep running all the time? According to the rule, this program would "earn a point" when you first launched it, and then it would gradually lose points⊜ even though you clearly use this program frequently. (Here, "frequently" is an understatement for "all the stin...
Project Update 3: Voyage to Our Hollow Earth
Alas, the original plan for the trip to the hole in the Arctic Ocean had to be scrapped due to the passing of organizer Steven Currey. But hollow earthers, don't give up hope! U.S. scientist Brooks Agnew has announced his plans to take the place of Mr. Currey, chartering the same ship and taking the same itinerary with the same goal. We'll check in next year to see what they've found.
Why does a new user get stuff on their Start menu right off the bat?
In the initial designs for the Start menu, the list of most-frequently-used programs on the Start menu would be completely empty the first time you opened it. This was perfectly logical, since you hadn't run any programs at all yet, so nothing was frequently-used because nothing had been used at all! Perfectly logical and completely stupid-looking. Imagine the disappointment of people who just bought a computer. They unpack it, plug everything in, turn it on, everything looks great. Then they open the Start menu to start using their computer and they get... a blank white space. "Ha-ha! This computer can't do any...
"Super" watch, episode 2
Not just "super exciting" but "super-super-exciting". (But at least he's not super super super excited.) I don't consider this super encouraging. Episode 1.
What other programs are filtered from the Start menu's list of frequently-used programs?
We already saw that programs in the pin list are pruned from the most-frequently-used programs list because they would be redundant. Another fine-tuning rule was introduced after the initial explorations with the new Windows XP Start menu: Programs with specific "noise" names are removed from consideration. Many "noise" programs were showing up as frequently used because they happened to be shortcuts to common helper programs like Notepad or Wordpad to display a "Read Me" document. These shortcuts needed to be filtered out so that they couldn't be nominated as, say, the Notepad representative. The list of ...
The Thing? Mystery of the desert
NPR reported on The Thing?, a surreal yet kitchy roadside attraction on Interstate 10 in Arizona which has cryptic (and therefore intriguing) advertising signs for hundreds of miles. Listen as Rene Gutel of member station KJZZ in Phoenix gets to the bottom of the enduring mystery: What is The Thing?
If you pin a program, it doesn't show up in the frequently-used programs list
After the initial explorations with the Windows XP Start menu, we had to add a rule that fine-tuned the results: If a program is pinned, then it is removed from consideration as a frequently-used program. For example, if you right-click Lotus Notes and select "Pin to Start menu", then it goes into the pin list and will never show up in the dynamic portion of the front page of the Start menu. This tweak was added to avoid the ugly situation where you have two icons for the same program on the front page of the Start menu, when only one would do the job. This is another manifestation of the "Don't show me s...