The Old New Thing

Low-tech usability testing

October 7, 2003 Oct 7, 2003 10/7/03

Raymond Chen

My pal Jason Moore discusses using paper prototypes as a fast way to get usability feedback. I found it interesting that by going low-tech, you actually get better feedback, because people are more willing to criticize a paper model than running code. (And another advantage of the paper model is that you can make changes ...

Why does the System Properties page round the memory size?

October 6, 2003 Oct 6, 2003 10/6/03

Raymond Chen

During Windows 95 beta testing, people ran the System Properties page and complained about "missing memory". The Windows 95 System Properties page reports the amount of memory available to Windows as system memory, which is not necessarily the same as the amount of memory installed in ...

Why can't I use &-accelerators on the Start menu?

October 3, 2003 Oct 3, 2003 10/3/03

Raymond Chen

The first letter of the program is the accelerator and there's nothing you can do about it. So if you have ten programs by Microsoft, they all use the accelerator "M". (Yes I hate this too. The first thing I do after installing a Microsoft program is go into the Start menu and delete the word "Microsoft" ...

Why is the readonly property for folders so strange?

September 30, 2003 Sep 30, 2003 09/30/03

Raymond Chen

It's actually a signal to Explorer to look harder.

Why you can’t rotate text

September 29, 2003 Sep 29, 2003 09/29/03

Raymond Chen

Answering a comment from an earlier entry.

When I dock my taskbar vertically, why does the word "Start" disappear?

September 20, 2003 Sep 20, 2003 09/20/03

Raymond Chen

Because the alternative is even worse. If the taskbar is not wide enough to display the entire word "Start", then the word "Start" is hidden. To get it back, resize the taskbar wider until the word "Start" reappears. This behavior is by design. From a design point of view, a ...

Why does Win32 fail a module load if an import could not be resolved?

September 16, 2003 Sep 16, 2003 09/16/03

Raymond Chen

Because we tried it the other way and it was much worse. In 16-bit Windows, a module that didn't satisfy all its imports would still load. As long as you didn't call a missing import, you were fine. If you did try to call a missing import, you crashed pretty spectacularly with the ...

Why does the taskbar default to the bottom of the screen?

September 12, 2003 Sep 12, 2003 09/12/03

Raymond Chen

The original taskbar didn't look at all like what you see today. It defaulted to the top of the screen.

Why do some people call the taskbar the “tray”?

September 10, 2003 Sep 10, 2003 09/10/03

Raymond Chen

Short answer: Because they're wrong. Long answer: The official name for the thingie at the bottom of the screen is the "taskbar". The taskbar contains a variety of elements, such as the "Start Button", a collection of "taskbar buttons", the clock, and the "Taskbar Notification Area". One of the most common errors is to refer to the Taskbar ...

It's a lot easier to write a column if you don't care about accuracy

September 8, 2003 Sep 8, 2003 09/8/03

Raymond Chen

Now that Longhorn Rumor Season seems to have kicked up, I'm reminded of Windows 95 Rumor Season. The great thing about writing a rumors column is that you don't have to be right! Even if you're wrong, you can just say, "Well, Microsoft changed it before they shipped," and nobody can say you were wrong. It'...