The Old New Thing
Practical development throughout the evolution of Windows.
Latest posts
The Airline Screening Playset
Here I am sitting in the airport waiting for my flight to begin boarding. What better time to break out the Airline Screening Playset. I love the fact that the gun fits into the suitcase.
Sometimes the fault is not in our stars but in ourselves
An earlier name for Windows Server 2003 was Microsoft Windows .NET Server, and in the final weeks leading up the the product's release, we received the following bug from a beta tester: When I call the GetVersionEx function on build 3773, the OS name is still reported as "Microsoft Windows .NET Enterprise Server". I have attached a sample program illustrating the bug. I found this kind of confusing, because the GetVersionEx function doesn't return a human-readable product name. Intriguged, I took a look at the sample program and it wasn't too hard to see where the bug was. The program contained the line...
The craft of UI design: flow|state
You can tell right away that Jan Miksovsky's flow|state is about user interface design. I've had the pleasure of working with Jan when he was at Microsoft. Whereas I focus on the mechanics of making a user interface happen, Jan looks at the bigger problems of design and interface architecture. For example, in this entry he considers the issue of asking the user unnecessary questions and highlights some ways you can avoid hassling the user with a barrage of questions while still giving the user the ability to answer the question if they choose to. Good stuff.
Taxes: Geopolitics
One frequently-overlooked software "tax" is geopolitics. We've alread seen that the time zone and regional settings dialogs created international unrest. It appears that Google Maps failed to recognize the extremely sensitive issue of naming the body of water that lies between Korea and Japan, as well as stirring up international tensions with the way it labelled the island of Taiwan. Like many issues regarding naming, these subjects are tied up in history with strong feelings on both sides. (And Google's efforts to placate the Taiwanese government only served to anger the Chinese government. Welcome to the...
Where does an IT guy from a major hotel chain stay at the PDC?
I believe it was Marc Miller who related this story to me at the PDC. He was chatting with someone whose name badge identified him as an employee from a major high-end hotel chain. Marc joked, "Well, I think it's obvious which hotel you're staying at." "Oh no," the gentleman replied. "They won't let me stay there. Too expensive." [Raymond is currently away; this message was pre-recorded.]
Taxes: Hierarchical Storage Management
One of the taxes I alluded to some time ago when I broached the issues of software development "taxes" is Hierarchical Storage Management. The short description of Hierarchical Storage Management is that it is a way of archiving data transparently. When a file is due for archival, it is transferred to a slower (but less expensive) storage medium, such as magnetic tape, leaving a stub behind. The stub retains some of the file's original metadata, such as last-modified time and file size, but none of the original file's contents are recorded by the stub. If a program tries to open the stub, the original file is...
How to get Raymond to stop being interested in talking with you
I was at a party in New York City earlier this year, and a conversation went like this: Person: What do you do? Me: I'm a computer programmer at Microsoft. Person: <viciously> I hate you. If Miss Manners didn't say so explicitly, I suspect she would nevertheless agree that snarling "I hate you" to somebody on first introduction is not exactly getting off on the right foot. [Raymond is currently away; this message was pre-recorded.]
This video universally gets one of two reactions
When I show someone this web site and the videos they put together on how Microsoft main campus could be serviced by a system of self-driving overhead personal vehicles, I get one of two reactions. Yet another of their web sites writes The small PRT tracks are only three feet across, and compliment modern office architecture. Psst, the word you want is "complement" with an "e". If you "compliment" (with an "i") something, you praise it. If you "complement" (with an "e") something, then you complete it. (In the realm of aesthetics, things that complement each other mutually enhance each other.) Mnemo...
What causes a program to be marked as “new” on the Start menu?
One of the features new in the Windows XP Start menu is that "newly-installed" programs are highlighted. Before discussing the rules, a quick backgrounder on why the feature exists at all. Research revealed that one of the tasks people had trouble with was installing a new program and running it. The step that the "new programs" feature tries to assist with is the "running it" part. In our tests, we found that people who managed to muddle through a program's setup got stuck at the "Okay, why don't you play the game now that you've installed it?" step because they couldn't figure out how to get to that pro...