The Old New Thing

Other - The Old New Thing

When do you disable an option and when do you remove it?

May 14, 2004 May 14, 2004 05/14/04
Raymond Chen
When you're displaying a menu item or a dialog option, and the option is not available, you can either disable it or you can remove it. What is the rule for deciding which one to do? Experiments have shown that if something is shown but disabled, users expect that they will be able to get it enabled if they tinker around enough. So ...

Thinking through a feature

May 13, 2004 May 13, 2004 05/13/04
Raymond Chen
The commentary after my entry on taskbar grouping drifted into people asking for still more features in taskbar grouping. Writing the code is the easy part. Designing a feature is hard. You have several audiences to consider. It's not just about the alpha geeks; you have to worry about the grandmothers, the office workers, the ...

Is your web site an open relay?

May 12, 2004 May 12, 2004 05/12/04
Raymond Chen
As if there isn't enough to worry about. Everyone knows about the dangers of open SMTP relays. But how many people realize the dangers of an open HTTP relay? Many web sites do arbitrary redirection. If I were a spammer, I could create a link to myself that redirects through some well-known web sites, thereby granting my spam link ...

Scripting is a two-edged sword

May 6, 2004 May 6, 2004 05/6/04
Raymond Chen
A three line VB script will disable your firewall. The advantage of scripting is that you can control so many things with just a few lines of code. The disadvantage of scripting is that bad people can control so many things with just a few lines of code. I wonder how long it will be before there's a virus that disables the firewall...

Is open source the new monoculture?

May 4, 2004 May 4, 2004 05/4/04
Raymond Chen
Okay I know I'm going to get into a lot of trouble for even bringing up this topic... This past weekend, Ulf Harnhammar discovered two buffer overflow and two directory traversal vulnerabilities in LHA, a library of data compression functions. Since the code for this is public, it has been copied all over the place. At least one ...

Where does the taskbar get grouped button icons from?

April 30, 2004 Apr 30, 2004 04/30/04
Raymond Chen
Follow-up question to Where does the taskbar get grouped button titles from?: Where does the taskbar get grouped button icons from? The icon for grouped taskbar buttons comes from the icon for the underlying EXE, the same icon that appears when you open the folder that the EXE resides in and scroll down to the EXE. For example, if ...

Why can't I install Windows on my USB drive?

April 15, 2004 Apr 15, 2004 04/15/04
Raymond Chen
A collection of limitations (both hardware and software) currently prevent Windows from booting and running off a USB drive. Some of them are described in this whitepaper from WinHEC 2003. Another reason not mentioned in this paper is that during any hot-plug operation, the USB bus is completely reinitialized. Windows really doesn't ...

Comparing the Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish languages.

April 9, 2004 Apr 9, 2004 04/9/04
Raymond Chen
As I got onto the plane for my outbound flight, I grabbed a Norwegian newspaper, having mistaken it for a Swedish paper. Fortunately, the two languages are so similar I was able to fake my way through it without too much difficulty. (And it's definitely an odd sensation reading U.S. cartoons translated into Norwegian...) The on-board ...