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January 2009 - Posts

Everyone wants a shiny new UI

Surfing around the web, I often run into web sites that contain critiques of various aspects of Windows UI. One of the most common criticisms on those sites is "old style" dialogs.  In other words, dialogs that don't have the most up-to-date Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 28, 2009 9:24 PM by LarryOsterman | 55 Comments

Fixing an accessibility bug with the trackbar common control

The trackbar common control is a strange beast. The trackbar can be oriented either horizontally or vertically. On LTR language machines, when the trackbar is horizontal, it works much as you’d expect it to: The minimum value of the trackbar is on the Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:17 PM by LarryOsterman | 9 Comments

When you do UX work, sometimes you have to worry about the strangest things…

I recently got a bug reported to me about the visuals in the sound control panel applet not being aligned properly (this is from the UI for a new Windows 7 feature): The problem as reported was that the microphone was aligned incorrectly w.r.t. the down Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 13, 2009 9:13 AM by LarryOsterman | 31 Comments

XKCD tries Windows 7 and loves it!

    Well I thought it was cute :). Read More...
Posted Friday, January 09, 2009 10:14 AM by LarryOsterman | 18 Comments
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Why do people think that a server SKU works well as a general purpose operating system?

Sometimes the expectations of our customers mystify me.   One of the senior developers at Microsoft recently complained that the audio quality on his machine (running Windows Server 2008) was poor. To me, it’s not surprising.  Server SKUs are Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 08, 2009 10:17 AM by LarryOsterman | 70 Comments
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Fixing a customer problem: “No Audio Device is Installed” when launching sndvol on Windows Vista

Yesterday someone forwarded me an email from one of our DirectShow MVPs – he was having problems playing audio on his Windows Vista machine.   Fortunately David (the MVP) had done most of the diagnostic work – the symptoms he saw were that he was Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 06, 2009 11:26 AM by LarryOsterman | 18 Comments
 
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