The Old New Thing

Stephen Tolouse's reminiscences of Windows 95 RTM day

January 26, 2006 Jan 26, 2006 01/26/06

Raymond Chen

Stephen Tolouse (known around Microsoft as "stepto", pronounced "step-toe") from the Microsoft Security Response Center reminisces about Windows 95 RTM. Stephen mentions that "the build numbers were artificially inflated to reach 950". There's actually a technical reason for this inflation, which I intend to write about when I have the ...

When web sites rely on security holes

January 12, 2006 Jan 12, 2006 01/12/06

Raymond Chen

Perhaps the biggest risk when making a change in the name of security is all the things that may have been relying on the previously-lax security settings. After all, disabling an insecure feature is easy. The hard part is disabling it while retaining compatibility with people who were relying on that feature. In the security investigations I'...

The decoy visual style

January 11, 2006 Jan 11, 2006 01/11/06

Raymond Chen

During the development of Windows XP, the visual design team were very cloak-and-dagger about what the final visual look was going to be. They had done a lot of research and put a lot of work into their designs and wanted to make sure that they made a big splash at the E3 conference when Luna was unveiled. Nobody outside the visual styles...

The decoy display control panel

January 10, 2006 Jan 10, 2006 01/10/06

Raymond Chen

Last time, we saw one example of a "decoy" used in the service of application compatibility with respect to the Printers Control Panel. Today we'll look at another decoy, this time for the Display Control Panel. When support for multiple monitors was being developed, a major obstacle was that a large number of display drivers hacked the ...

When programs assume that the system will never change, episode 3

January 9, 2006 Jan 9, 2006 01/9/06

Raymond Chen

One of the stranger application compatibility puzzles was solved by a colleague of mine who was trying to figure out why a particular program couldn't open the Printers Control Panel. Upon closer investigation, the reason became clear. The program launched the Control Panel, used to locate the window, then accessed that window's "File" menu ...

Why did the Windows 95 CD have extra fun stuff?

January 3, 2006 Jan 3, 2006 01/3/06

Raymond Chen

Why did the Windows 95 CD have extra fun stuff, like the Good Times and Buddy Holly music videos, the Rob Roy trailer, and the cartoons by Bill Plympton? Because it was fun! Why does one have to justify having fun? In addition to the multimedia fun, there was also video game fun, with the addition of Pinball and the mercifully-forgotten ...

Why do up-down controls have the arrows backwards?

December 22, 2005 Dec 22, 2005 12/22/05

Raymond Chen

When you create an up-down control (some people call a "spinner" control) in its default configuration, the up-arrow decrements the value and the down-arrow increments it. Most people expect the up-arrow to increment and the down-arrow to decrement. Why is it backwards? The up-down control is a victim of Windows' reversed y-axis. ...

The office disco party

December 21, 2005 Dec 21, 2005 12/21/05

Raymond Chen

One of the long-standing traditions at Microsoft is to play a prank on someone's office while they're away on vacation. You can imagine what most of these pranks are like, filling someone's office with packing peanuts or other materials, or relocating their office to an unlikely part of the building (the bathroom, the cafeteria), or something ...

On the inability to support hardware that nobody makes any more

December 9, 2005 Dec 9, 2005 12/9/05

Raymond Chen

Windows Vista will not have support for really old DVD drives. (The information below was kindly provided to me by the optical storage driver team.) When PC DVD drives first came out in 1998, the drives themselves did not have support for region codes but instead relied on (and in fact the DVD specification required) the operating ...

Using a physical object as a reminder

December 8, 2005 Dec 8, 2005 12/8/05

Raymond Chen

On our team, we have a mailing list where people can report problems. Those people could be testers from our team or they could be people from elsewhere in the company. Everybody on the team is expected to keep an eye on the messages and debug problems in their area. The job of monitoring the mailing list to ensure that every issue is ...