Random tip: if you're using procmon.exe to monitor file system activity, you'll see a FileAttributes field with a bunch of letters. It's not immediately obvious which letters correspond to which Win32 file attribute constants . I asked around internally...

Today we announced a new licensing program for the Microsoft Office 2007 user interface components . Licensing UI in this way is something for new Microsoft, but it should work out well for developers who want to take advantage of all the research that...

Is there anything more fun than writing custom VBA macros to solve a problem you face in your favorite app? Actually, I'm sure there's lots that's more fun. But, since I went through the pain of figuring this out, I figured I'd post here for posterity...

There are a ton of new features in the Windows Vista platform (thousands of new APIs), some of which are accessible on Windows XP and Server 2003 via redistributable runtimes. Because of those runtimes, we often hear confusion from partners about how...

I've been using various beta builds of IE 7 for several months now, and I am really impressed with the new security features and default settings . I've seen gold bar and address bar warnings that highlight real issues with real commercial sites as I...

One of the very cool things about the Visual Studio Team System 2005 release is that it includes a number of tools for code robustness that were developed for internal use at Microsoft. Many of the same tools that the Windows team and others use to improve...

I just discovered that an early draft (version .5) of the logo guidelines for Windows Vista software is available here . It's only a draft, but it gives you a good idea of the basics you have to implement in order to qualify for the Windows Vista logo...

Last month, the MSDN team published a doc that's long been in the works -- a developer's introduction to some of the new APIs in Windows Vista . The real meat is in the .chm file (self-extracting exe), with some sample code and detailed API info. This...

Many folks have noticed that Mike Swanson's weeks of hard work have paid off, and the full video, PPT and demo recordings of PDC 05 sessions are now online (and that the DVD sets for attendees will be on the way soon as well.) Seems like the videos are...

We heard from some attendees that they were having a hard time choosing between DAT209 (WinFS Future Directions: An Overview) and TLN306 (The .NET Language Integreate Query Framework: An Overview) in the Wednesday 1:45pm timeslot. To make it a little...

One of the goodies that PDC attendees will find in their swag bag is a poster called "Lighting up on Windows Vista". It lists the top 10 things developers can do to build apps that will run like a dream on our new OS release. We've now posted a short...

The PDC content team is on site in LA! It's been an intense last month getting ready for the event, which explains the absence of any interesting blog posts from me. If I have some time in the next few days before the show starts, I will try to write...

Sometimes it's the little things that make a difference...by popular request, the current list of PDC sessions is now available as an Excel spreadsheet , or as RSS^H^H^H Web Feeds ;). Any changes we make to session titles, speakers, timeslots, etc (and...

Andrew Orlowski, of The Register, recently posted a very short blurb about problems with IE 7 .  He makes two significant errors that I want to clear up here.  It took my all of 3 minutes to refute these statements on my XP SP 2 box running IE 7 TechBeta...

check it out, http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

Justin Rogers , a dev on IE's object model team, posts about his recent MSDN article on leak patterns in IE . If you're doing serious DHTML development for IE, this article is a must read. Says Justin: let's look at the following patterns...

The closer the PDC track team comes to locking down our session list, the more we hear from internal Microsoft platform folks who wonder why their sessions didn't make the cut (or why out of the 10 sessions they proposed, only 1 got approved). When the...

I've noticed that a couple of the track owners on our virtual content team have started blogging about PDC. Mike Fitzmaurice is one of the track owners for our Office 12 and Sharepoint content. He talked a bit about why he's excited to have a signifcant...

I have a long list of backlogged things to post about...but for now, I just want to quickly note that registration is open ! We also posted 50+ session titles -- these aren't the final titles, but they give a pretty good flavor for the kinds of things...

I saw it on a banner ad on microsoft.com, so it must be true! PDC reg opens June 7...

After another visit to the Apple store, and another struggle with the Genius bar, I'm now in a state where iTunes blue-screens (BAD_POOL_CALLER) when I plug in my iPod. If I uninstall iTunes, I can connect the iPod to my PC and it behaves like a nice...

After two grumpy posts, here's a feel-good post. I've had two day-long meeting/training things each of the last two weeks. And at both of them, I was pleasantly surprised that, when it came time to do some team writing excercises on a sketch pad, we got...

So speaking of over promising and under delivering : I just returned home from one of the most frustrating customer service experiences I've had, courtesy of the Apple store near my home. Last year, I bought my wife an iPod for her birthday. At the...

I'm in a mood to rant about poor customer service experiences I've had lately. Since one of them is about Apple, I figured I better start by posting the other one, which is related to Microsoft technology. Back in November, I bought an Audiovox SMT...

It’s been a while since I last posted about PDC content planning. Thing suddenly got very busy in the last month, as we got ready to move into the session development phase. One of the things that makes PDC unique among Microsoft conferences is...