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October 2003 - Posts

Friday, October 31, 2003 9:00 AM

Why highlighting by inverting colors is a bad idea

This may have worked great on two-color black-and-white displays, but in the world of 32-bit color this no longer is effective.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Thursday, October 30, 2003 11:36 AM

I thought you said people don't know how to read analog clocks

Yet there is is in the Longhorn sidebar. What gives?
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Wednesday, October 29, 2003 10:43 AM

Drawing an active-looking caption even when not active

"Why would somebody ever want to do that?"
Posted by oldnewthing | 20 Comments
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Tuesday, October 28, 2003 10:12 AM

When vendors insult themselves

During Windows 95, when we were building the Plug and Play infrastructure, we got an angry letter from a hardware vendor complaining that we intentionally misspelled their name in our INF files.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Monday, October 27, 2003 1:08 PM

Getting a custom right-click menu for the caption icon

Explorer does it. Now you can too.
Posted by oldnewthing | 2 Comments
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Sunday, October 26, 2003 1:19 AM

Being the Nobel Peace Prize

Choosing a Hallowe'en costume is hard work.
Posted by oldnewthing | 12 Comments
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Saturday, October 25, 2003 8:29 PM

Kinder Überraschungen

The tasty treat with a surprise. Banned in the United States.
Posted by oldnewthing | 14 Comments
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Friday, October 24, 2003 7:00 AM

Why Daylight Savings Time is nonintuitive

Daylight Savings Time ends this weekend in most of North America and Europe, so it seems a good time to discuss the whole problem of Daylight Savings Time and timestamps.
Posted by oldnewthing | 32 Comments
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Thursday, October 23, 2003 3:18 AM

Writing a sort comparison function

The rules for sort comparison functions have some interesting consequences.
Posted by oldnewthing | 8 Comments
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Wednesday, October 22, 2003 11:51 AM

What's the deal with those reserved filenames like NUL and CON?

Set the wayback machine to DOS 1.0.
Posted by oldnewthing | 22 Comments
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Tuesday, October 21, 2003 12:13 PM

Using the TAB key to navigate in non-dialogs

The IsDialogMessage function works even if you aren't a dialog.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Monday, October 20, 2003 3:58 AM

What is the Alt+Tab order?

What determines the order in which icons appear in the Alt+Tab list?
Posted by oldnewthing | 23 Comments
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Monday, October 20, 2003 3:56 AM

The more I learn about Sweden, the weirder it gets

It must be really boring in Sweden in the winter.
Posted by oldnewthing | 10 Comments
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Saturday, October 18, 2003 11:49 AM

Curling anyone?

The Granite Curling Club is having an open house.
Posted by oldnewthing | 9 Comments
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Friday, October 17, 2003 12:56 PM

Don't let Marketing mess with your slides

It's PDC season, so I thought I'd relate an anecdote about a conference from many years ago.
Posted by oldnewthing | 5 Comments
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Thursday, October 16, 2003 8:31 AM

Scrollbars redux: Part 12

Display a Word-style scroll tip.
Posted by oldnewthing | 0 Comments
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Thursday, October 16, 2003 2:00 AM

The much-misunderstood "nop" action

Sometimes you have to do nothing, and that counts as doing something.
Posted by oldnewthing | 6 Comments
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003 1:36 PM

Murphy's law for school

If you know the answer to every question but one, the teacher will call on you to answer that one.
Posted by oldnewthing | 2 Comments
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Wednesday, October 15, 2003 1:34 PM

What about BOZOSLIVEHERE and TABTHETEXTOUTFORWIMPS?

More strange function names.
Posted by oldnewthing | 54 Comments
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Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:16 PM

Why don't notification icons get a message when the user clicks the "X" button?

There was a conscious decision not to do this.
Posted by oldnewthing | 9 Comments
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Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:14 PM

Answer to previous exercise

If the program starts with the mouse already in the client area without moving, why do you get a beep?
Posted by oldnewthing | 0 Comments
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Monday, October 13, 2003 12:39 PM

Why is there no WM_MOUSEENTER message?

There is a WM_MOUSELEAVE message. Why isn't there a WM_MOUSEENTER message?
Posted by oldnewthing | 6 Comments
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Friday, October 10, 2003 1:28 PM

Why doesn't the clock in the taskbar display seconds?

It's all about benchmarks.
Posted by oldnewthing | 27 Comments
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Thursday, October 09, 2003 12:14 PM

Other uses for bitmap brushes

Not just for monochrome patterns any more.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Wednesday, October 08, 2003 11:49 AM

Why is address space allocation granularity 64K?

You have the Alpha AXP processor to thank for that.
Posted by oldnewthing | 8 Comments
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Wednesday, October 08, 2003 10:48 AM

In Explorer, you can right-click the icon in the caption

Apparently not enough people realize this.
Posted by oldnewthing | 15 Comments
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Wednesday, October 08, 2003 10:44 AM

I'm doing this instead of writing a book

It turns out that writing a book is hard.
Posted by oldnewthing | 24 Comments
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Tuesday, October 07, 2003 10:00 AM

Low-tech usability testing

Sometimes technology just gets in the way.
Posted by oldnewthing | 1 Comments
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Tuesday, October 07, 2003 9:56 AM

Stupid memory-mapping tricks

Shared memory is not just for sharing memory with other processes. It also lets you share memory with yourself in sneaky ways.
Posted by oldnewthing | 9 Comments
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Monday, October 06, 2003 11:24 AM

Researchers discover link between music and drinking

A British scientific study shows that a bit of classical music can persuade diners to buy more fancy coffees, pricey wines and luxurious desserts.
Posted by oldnewthing | 1 Comments
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Monday, October 06, 2003 10:53 AM

Why does the System Properties page round the memory size?

During Windows 95 beta testing, people ran the System Properties page and complained about "missing memory".
Posted by oldnewthing | 3 Comments
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Friday, October 03, 2003 9:51 AM

Why can't I use &-accelerators on the Start menu?

The first letter of the program is the accelerator and there's nothing you can do about it.
Posted by oldnewthing | 19 Comments
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Thursday, October 02, 2003 1:59 PM

What do the text label colors mean for files?

Blue means compressed; green means encrypted.
Posted by oldnewthing | 23 Comments
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Thursday, October 02, 2003 1:20 PM

Why does my Advanced Options dialog say ON and OFF after every option?

Because Windows thinks a screenreader is running.
Posted by oldnewthing | 10 Comments
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003 7:11 PM

Jag skrivar svenska inte so bra.

The nice thing about the schwa sound is that you don't have to spell it.
Posted by oldnewthing | 6 Comments
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003 1:05 PM

Jag taler lita svenska.

Learning a new language for the first time in over 15 years.
Posted by oldnewthing | 13 Comments
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003 12:42 PM

Why do I get spurious WM_MOUSEMOVE messages?

In order to understand this properly, it helps to know where WM_MOUSEMOVE messages come from.
Posted by oldnewthing | 7 Comments
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