The Old New Thing

History - The Old New Thing

Why does each drive have its own current directory?

October 11, 2010 Oct 11, 2010 10/11/10
Raymond Chen
Commenter Dean Earley asks, "Why is there a 'current directory' AND an current drive? Why not merge them?" Pithy answer: Originally, each drive had its own current directory, but now they don't, but it looks like they do. Okay, let's unwrap that sentence. You actually know enough to answer the question yourself; you just have to put the ...

Wildly popular computer game? The Windows product team has you covered

October 6, 2010 Oct 6, 2010 10/6/10
Raymond Chen
In Windows 95, the most heavily-tested computer game was DOOM. Not because the testers spent a lot of time developing test plans and test harnesses and automated run-throughs. Nope, it was because it was by far the most popular game the Windows 95 team members played to unwind. It was a huge breakthrough when DOOM finally ran inside...

Fact check: The first major Microsoft product launched via Webcast

September 21, 2010 Sep 21, 2010 09/21/10
Raymond Chen
In 2009, while hosting the Webcast launch of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (what a mouthful; no wonder they renamed it Lync), Stephen Elop claimed that this was the first time Microsoft had launched a major product via Webcast. Elop's crack team of marketing researchers apparently forgot about the Webcast launch, just three months ...

Yes, the Windows 7 beta wallpaper was a picture of a betta fish

September 1, 2010 Sep 1, 2010 09/1/10
Raymond Chen
It wasn't long before people realized that the fish in the default wallpaper for the Windows 7 beta was a betta fish. This was intended to be a cute little pun, though some people took the semiotics to an extreme, Dude, this is Windows, not The Da Vinci Code. It's not like the people who chose the wallpaper are using a backchannel to ...

Why does the primary monitor have (0,0) as its upper left coordinate?

August 20, 2010 Aug 20, 2010 08/20/10
Raymond Chen
By definition, the primary monitor is the monitor that has (0,0) as its upper left corner. Why can't the primary monitor be positioned somewhere else? Well, sure you could do that, but then you'd have to invent a new name for the monitor whose upper left corner is at (0,0), and then you're back where you started. In other words, it's just a ...

What happened to WinHelp?

August 16, 2010 Aug 16, 2010 08/16/10
Raymond Chen
Commenter winhelp (probably not his/her real name) wonders what happened to WinHelp.exe. I don't know, but it turns out the answer was already known to the Internet. At the time the question was posted, the answer was already in the Wikipedia entry for Windows Help—it even had a citation! The question does highlight another one of ...

Don't forget to replace your placeholder bitmaps with real bitmaps

August 3, 2010 Aug 3, 2010 08/3/10
Raymond Chen
The story We Burned the Poop reminded me of an embarrassing story a colleague of mine related from earlier in his programming career. During the development of the product he was working on, the programmers needed an image for a comparatively rarely-used piece of the user interface. Since programmers aren't graphic designers, they inserted a...