The Old New Thing

How do you drop on the background of an Explorer window when it is in details view?

August 5, 2009 Aug 5, 2009 08/5/09

Raymond Chen

When you set your Explorer to Details view, it can become tricky to drop an item onto the window background (in order to move it into the folder) because Details view sets full row select (starting in Windows Vista). This helps users of tablets and touch screens, because it increases the size of the target when dragging and dropping into ...

How do I quickly position two windows side by side using only the keyboard?

July 30, 2009 Jul 30, 2009 07/30/09

Raymond Chen

alexx is looking for a keyboard-only equivalent to the ctrl+click trick I mentioned a few days ago. Not as quick, but it still works. And it works even if the windows you want got converted into a group. Of course, on Windows 7, you can use the Win+Left and Win+Right hotkeys. (Users with multiple monitors can couple this with Win+...

How do I put a window at the edge of the screen without triggering the automatic positioning behavior?

July 29, 2009 Jul 29, 2009 07/29/09

Raymond Chen

Last time, we saw that Windows 7 lets you position windows to fill the left or right half of the screen by just dragging the window to the appropriate edge. (This also works for the top and bottom half of the screen.) But what if you just want a window near the edge without the automatic positioning? Just grab the window from the far ...

How do I quickly position two windows side by side?

July 28, 2009 Jul 28, 2009 07/28/09

Raymond Chen

Commenter n/a posted a laundry list of feature requests. I'm not going to address all of them here (though I inadvertently addressed one of them a while ago). But today I'm going to address request number two, "A simple switch to create two windows, one alongside the other, vertically split." That feature has been around since Windows ...

Attack of the rogue feature: Oh no, where did my Explorer icon labels go?

July 8, 2009 Jul 8, 2009 07/8/09

Raymond Chen

A customer reported that on Windows Vista, if you hold down the shift key and repeatedly click the View button in the command bar of an Explorer window, you will eventually reach a state where all the labels under the icons have disappeared! Where did they go, and how do I get them back? Congratulations, you stumbled across a rogue feature...

Why does my screen go black when an emergency hibernation is in progress?

July 3, 2009 Jul 3, 2009 07/3/09

Raymond Chen

Sometime last year a customer wanted to know why the screen goes black when the system automatically hibernates due to critically low battery power. Shouldn't there be some sort of feedback to tell the user, "Hey, like, I'm hibernating, don't worry"? The power management folks explained that they turn off the screen for a reason: They're ...

You can use a Coke slogan as your password, but not a Pepsi one

July 2, 2009 Jul 2, 2009 07/2/09

Raymond Chen

When Larry Osterman mentioned News Flash: Spaces are legal characters in both filenames and passwords, I was reminded of my own little experiment with passwords and spaces. Over a decade ago, I tried using spaces in my password, and they were accepted, but I ran into a different problem: Brand name bias. The password system accepted "Coke ...

First, try reading the error message: Episode 1

May 21, 2009 May 21, 2009 05/21/09

Raymond Chen

Quite some time ago, a customer had forgotten that they were using an evaluation edition of Windows, and they were awakened one morning with the following error message: The evaluation period for this installation of Windows has expired. This system will shut down in 1 hour. To restore access to this installation of Windows, please upgrade ...

How do I get a window back on the screen when it moved far, far away?

May 11, 2009 May 11, 2009 05/11/09

Raymond Chen

Commenter Aggravated notes that some programs remember their location when the window is closed and restore to that location when the window is reopened, even if that position is off the screen. These programs clearly were using screen coordinates instead of workspace coordinates to save and restore the window. Okay, so you've got a ...

Those notification icons, with their clicks, double-clicks, right-clicks… what’s up with that?

April 30, 2009 Apr 30, 2009 04/30/09

Raymond Chen

(A completely feeble attempt to mimic Michael Kaplan's blog entry titles which carry a much stronger voice.) Jonathan Hardwick made a short table of inconsistencies in how various programs handle clicks on their notification icons. How are these supposed to work? The final decision is up to the application, since it is the one that ...