The Old New Thing

History - The Old New Thing

How do 16-bit programs start up?

December 3, 2007 Dec 3, 2007 12/3/07
Raymond Chen
Back in 16-bit Windows, MS-DOS cast a long and dark shadow. The really ugly low-level munging was very much in the MS-DOS spirit. You opened files by setting up registers and issuing an , just like in MS-DOS. Although the interrupt went to Windows instead, Windows maintained the MS-DOS calling convention. Process startup followed the same "...

You even have to watch out for your placeholder bitmaps

November 20, 2007 Nov 20, 2007 11/20/07
Raymond Chen
During the betas of Windows Vista, the final set of sample logon pictures had yet to be determined, so a bunch of placeholder bitmaps were created. These placeholders consisted of the letters FPO in a box. FPO is a standard term in desktop publishing; it stands for For Position Only. In order to permit designers to perform page layout ...

Amusing bug reports: On poetry and prose

November 13, 2007 Nov 13, 2007 11/13/07
Raymond Chen
Back in Windows 95, there was one bug that was originally filed against the window manager team. Upon closer investigation, the window manager team determined that the bug was really in the video driver and added their analysis to the bug as they reassigned it. I don't know what overcame them, but the analysis was written in iambic ...

Why doesn't Explorer show recursive directory size as an optional column?

October 29, 2007 Oct 29, 2007 10/29/07
Raymond Chen
"Why start up another program to see folder sizes, when they should just be right there, in Explorer, all the time?" The same reason \\ does not autocomplete to all the computers on the network: Because it would destroy corporate networks. Showing folder sizes "all the time" means that when you open, say, the root of a large server, ...

What's the deal with the EM_SETHILITE message?

October 25, 2007 Oct 25, 2007 10/25/07
Raymond Chen
If you look up the documentation on the and messages, they just say "not implemented". What's going on here? The and messages were added back in 2002 for the breadcrumb bar to use. Back in those days, the breadcrumb bar wasn't what you see in Windows Vista today, a series of buttons with drop-down arrows, each representing a level in the ...

Whose idea was it to make Ctrl+Backspace delete the previous word?

October 11, 2007 Oct 11, 2007 10/11/07
Raymond Chen
James Manning mentioned in a footnote to a blog entry on PowerShell and WMI that he considers the Ctrl+Backspace shortcut key a Windows-ism. Where did this shortcut key come from? From a fan of the Brief editor. A few people in the early days of the Internet Explorer group used the Brief editor, which uses Ctrl+Backspace as the shortcut ...

The early days of the Microsoft cafeterias

October 5, 2007 Oct 5, 2007 10/5/07
Raymond Chen
A tour of Redmond campus cafeterias back in the old days took much less time than it would require nowadays. Back then, the cafeterias were tiny affairs, the size of maybe three offices not counting the prep area, with a seating capacity of maybe a dozen tables. Each cafeteria had a theme, so going to lunch back in the day was not "Let's go ...

Why did the shortcut template change in Windows Vista?

September 27, 2007 Sep 27, 2007 09/27/07
Raymond Chen
Since Windows 95, when you right-dragged an item and selected "Create Shortcut", you got "Shortcut to X". But in Windows Vista, the name is now "X - Shortcut". Why is that? Two reasons. The first reason is globalization. The template "Shortcut to X" made X the object of a preposition. In some languages, this may ...