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If you ask an old-timer how to test for file existence, they'll say, "Use ." This is still probably the quickest way to test for file existence, since it requires only a single call. Other methods such as or require a separate or call, which triggers another network round-trip, which adds to the cost. But back in the old days, the preference f...

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 key to ...

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 to the...

For the story of how WiX got its name, I defer to its author, Rob Mensching.

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 require c...

In the properties of console windows, you can turn on QuickEdit mode, which allows the mouse to be used to select text without having to go explicitly into Mark mode. (In a sense, the console window is permanently in Mark mode.) Why isn't this on by default? It's so useful! Somebody thought the same thing and changed the default in one of the earl...

One of my many favorite Dilbert cartoons is also one of the earlier ones. It's the first strip reprinted in this article. It may not actually have happened, but I was told that that one project many years ago replaced its lead manager. While noteworthy, this sort of thing happens often enough that people take it in stride. What put it into a high...

Daniel Will-Harris explains the background of several Windows fonts, including the story of where the names for some of the fonts came from. Do you know which Windows font is named after a tabloid headline about aliens? On the topic of font history, the designer of Comic Sans, Vincent Connare, has written a bit on the font's history on Microsof...

Prerequisites: Moderate to advanced understanding of the window and dialog managers. When you're implementing a control, you need to be aware that you aren't necessarily being hosted inside a dialog box. One commenter suggested handling and closing the dialog box as a way to prevent multi-line edit controls from eating the Enter key. But the edi...

Based on the feedback from my last CLR week, I think one CLR week a year is about right, Welcome to CLR Week 2007. I'll kick off the week with something not actually technical, but which might be puzzling to the newcomers: Why is the blog's subtitle "Not actually a .NET blog"? When I started, the blog hosting site for Microsoft technical blogger...