The Old New Thing

Why doesn't the clock in the taskbar display seconds?

October 10, 2003 Oct 10, 2003 10/10/03
Raymond Chen
Early beta versions of the taskbar clock did display seconds, and it even blinked the colon like some clocks do. But we had to remove it. Why? Because that blinking colon and the constantly-updating time were killing our benchmark numbers. On machines with ...

Other uses for bitmap brushes

October 9, 2003 Oct 9, 2003 10/9/03
Raymond Chen
Bitmap brushes used to be these little 8x8 monochrome patterns that you could use for hatching and maybe little houndstooth patterns if you were really crazy. But you can do better. CreatePatternBrush lets you pass in any old bitmap - even a huge one, and it will create a brush from it. ...
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In Explorer, you can right-click the icon in the caption

October 8, 2003 Oct 8, 2003 10/8/03
Raymond Chen
In Explorer, you can right-click the icon in the caption to get the context menu for the folder you are viewing. (Very handy for "Search" or "Command Prompt Here".) Apparently not enough people realize this. In Windows 95, we tried to make it so most icons on the screen did something interesting when you right-clicked them...

I'm doing this instead of writing a book

October 8, 2003 Oct 8, 2003 10/8/03
Raymond Chen
Some commenters mentioned that I should write a book. It turns out that writing a book is hard. A few years ago, MS Press actually approached me about writing a book for them. But I declined because the fashion for technical books is to take maybe fifty pages of information and pad it to a 700-page book, and I can't write that way. None of ...

Low-tech usability testing

October 7, 2003 Oct 7, 2003 10/7/03
Raymond Chen
My pal Jason Moore discusses using paper prototypes as a fast way to get usability feedback. I found it interesting that by going low-tech, you actually get better feedback, because people are more willing to criticize a paper model than running code. (And another advantage of the paper model is that you can make changes ...

Stupid memory-mapping tricks

October 7, 2003 Oct 7, 2003 10/7/03
Raymond Chen
Shared memory is not just for sharing memory with other processes. It also lets you share memory with yourself in sneaky ways. For example, this sample program (all error checking and cleanup deleted for expository purposes) shows how you can map the same shared memory into two locations ...
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Researchers discover link between music and drinking

October 6, 2003 Oct 6, 2003 10/6/03
Raymond Chen
A British scientific study shows that a bit of classical music can persuade diners to buy more fancy coffees, pricey wines and luxurious desserts. "North has shown that playing German or French music can persuade diners to buy wine from those countries." I found this to be true in my experience. If you get two thousand ...

Why does the System Properties page round the memory size?

October 6, 2003 Oct 6, 2003 10/6/03
Raymond Chen
During Windows 95 beta testing, people ran the System Properties page and complained about "missing memory". The Windows 95 System Properties page reports the amount of memory available to Windows as system memory, which is not necessarily the same as the amount of memory installed in ...

Why can't I use &-accelerators on the Start menu?

October 3, 2003 Oct 3, 2003 10/3/03
Raymond Chen
The first letter of the program is the accelerator and there's nothing you can do about it. So if you have ten programs by Microsoft, they all use the accelerator "M". (Yes I hate this too. The first thing I do after installing a Microsoft program is go into the Start menu and delete the word "Microsoft" ...