The Old New Thing

History - The Old New Thing

No, really, why is it 160×31?

July 7, 2006 Jul 7, 2006 07/7/06
Raymond Chen
When I discussed some time ago why minimized windows have an apparent size of 160x31, I explained that the minimized icon is a miniature title bar, but I managed not to explain why the values are exactly 160 and 31. The width of the miniature title bar is determined by the member of structure. You can retrieve and change this structure ...

The forgotten common controls: The page scroller

June 6, 2006 Jun 6, 2006 06/6/06
Raymond Chen
The pager control was introduced with the common controls library that came with Internet Explorer 4.0 in order to assist in implementing scrolling menus on the Start menu and Favorites menu. (The Start menu and Favorites menu aren't really menus in the Win32 sense. They are custom controls written to act like menus; the fakemenu sample...

What does the CS_CLASSDC class style do?

June 2, 2006 Jun 2, 2006 06/2/06
Raymond Chen
Last time, I talked about the historical background for the class style and why it starts out sounding like a good idea but when you think about it some more turns out to be an awful idea. The class style is the same thing, but worse, for it takes all the problems of and magnifies them. Recall that the class style instructs the window ...

What does the CS_OWNDC class style do?

June 1, 2006 Jun 1, 2006 06/1/06
Raymond Chen
Recall that window DCs are most commonly used only temporarily. If you need to draw into a window, you call or, if outside of a paint cycle, , although painting outside of a paint cycle is generally to be avoided. The window manager produces a DC for the window and returns it. You use the DC, then restore it to its original state and return ...

Do it for Katie

May 31, 2006 May 31, 2006 05/31/06
Raymond Chen
A story in honor of Katie Couric's final day at the Today show. Last month I happened to run into a former member of the shell team who worked on the Windows XP Welcome screen. He told me a story from CES 2001, where Windows XP's interface (code-named Luna) was unveiled. There was going to be a segment on the Today show, and ...

Using Yoda on an x86 may be hazardous to your systems' health

May 25, 2006 May 25, 2006 05/25/06
Raymond Chen
In former times very cross-platform NTVDM was. If you view in a hex editor, you'll find the message "Using Yoda on an x86 may be hazardous to your systems' health" buried inside it. Yoda was the name of the internal debugger that was used to debug the MS-DOS emulator, also known as the Virtual DOS Machine or VDM. (Buried inside the Yoda ...

What can I do with the HINSTANCE returned by the ShellExecute function?

May 5, 2006 May 5, 2006 05/5/06
Raymond Chen
As we saw earlier, in 16-bit Windows, the identified a program. The Win32 kernel is a complete redesign from the 16-bit kernel, introducing such concepts as "kernel objects" and "security descriptors". In particular 16-bit Windows didn't have "process IDs"; the instance handle served that purpose. That is why the and functions returned an...

More about the house in front of Microsoft's RedWest campus

April 20, 2006 Apr 20, 2006 04/20/06
Raymond Chen
After I mentioned that house in front of Microsoft's RedWest campus, I received an e-mail message from Mike Daly which corrects some of my mistakes and provides additional details: Actually, there were two houses in the strip in front of RedWest. The one you show has not been moved. The other ended up on blocks and parked opposite the ...

Where did start.com get its name?

April 14, 2006 Apr 14, 2006 04/14/06
Raymond Chen
I remember some time ago getting a piece of email that basically said, "Hey, is anybody using start.com?" I have since learned that that domain was registered by the marketing department, presumably to "synergize" with the "Start Me Up" campaign or something like that, but nothing ever happened with it. Nevertheless the registration kept ...