The Old New Thing

Hey Raymond,

I just loved your interview. I think you actually come over pretty cool ;)

But then again, you probably have the most amazing job, being able to proud yourself about REMOVING features.

I especially like how the interviewer (slightly unsettled) asks:

"Well...... what was your favorite feature that you removed?"

Anyway, I love your blog and I've already ordered the book!

Bye,

Michael

Note that the interview with Raymond starts 10 minutes into the podcast.

Okay, I'm going to be very naughty here.  I'm going to post something that's not actually related to this interview.  But I'm a desparate man and at the end of my rope.  After reading it, maybe you can understand my frustration and forgive me for intruding.  This just seems like my last hope of finding someone who can actually help.

I just recently noticed that one of my XP machines i acting in a very frustrating manner. Normally, if you minimize an application and then press alt-tab, that application is the last one on the list. This has been the behavior forever and still is on my laptop. However, on my desktop it now puts the minimized app in SECOND position. This means if I minimize an app and hit alt-tab, I'm back at the minimized app. Turns out to be a very useless way of doing things. I've found several other unanswered reports in usenet and on blogs from other people with the same problem. I also have another person at my office so afflicted. Does anyone know if there's setting I obliviously tweaked that screwed me over? Any idea how to fix this problem?

Thank you for your patience.

JP, does the app you're talking about happen to be a "topmost" app?  That is, does it stay on top of, say, Notepad, even when Notepad has focus?

I see he had a hard time choosing words when talking with you... poor him... :P

> Normally, if you minimize an

> application and then press alt-tab,

> that application is the last one on

> the list.

JP, it doesn't exactly work like this on my 2k3 machine.

Take firefox; I have two windows open. If I minimize one, it alt-tab takes me to the OTHER one first, i.e. it alternates.

It DOES behave as you describe for other applications though, so maybe it's a per-process thing.

Anyway, for a definitive answer, your best way to get a response from Raymond is to post your question here: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/articles/407234.aspx.

Right, I'm only referring to WELL-BEHAVED applications.  This happens even if the test windows are just notepad and calc windows.  These aren't special topmost ones or anything else.

Like I said, I've found a couple of XP machines that behave this way.  Nothing is different service pack wise or anything else.

Thanks for the suggestion box suggestion.  Somehow I managed to totally miss that.  I will post there and only post here if someone asks a questions.  Apologies to Raymond.

This interview was more fun to listen to than the previous one. The interviewer asked comparitively better questions except for the one on bluetooth. Thanks for the link.

Congrats on 15 years and The Tome!

By the way, please come to my campus and sign my book. You can even give a colloquium presentation on UI design while you're here.

(Really, that would be very cool, though I'm sure you're too busy giving all these interviews to take the 800 mile jaunt down here :)

I actually had to go into Help and Support and look-up 'scraps' (I was certain I misheard). I can't believe this feature ever existed. In fact it seems pretty useful, although I doubt any average-to-power Windows user was ever aware of its existence. Well, farewell, Scraps.(i.e., not the dog)

Yes, this interviewer definitely was better than the last two - he'd done his research. He was able to back up his assertions, and fill in where Raymond didn't know.

He wasn't terribly forceful, though: he tried to direct the conversation, but Raymond didn't take the hints and steamrollered him :P Raymond talked a lot and fast and didn't give the interviewer much chance to ask questions.

Great to hear about what has been removed. While it's a good solid OS, I've already decided that Vista won't be for me, personally... but Raymond does make it sound almost tempting.

It's like I was overjoyed to hear that PHP6 development seemed to be focussing mostly on what features to remove: http://dewimorgan.livejournal.com/17659.html

Marketing people should latch onto that, I feel. I thought they'd figured it with Office: people hate bloat, and so loved (I believe) the "death of clippy" advertising.

Raymond,

Love your comment "We took out Active Desktop because, mmmm, it's like ... what's all this about?"  

That was what I felt most of the time when it was being built. I know it was to highlight internet integration, it just never seemed all that compelling to me. But then I came to the web after years on usenet and thought, god, it's a presentation mechanism. How boring. So maybe it's more about the execution than anything else...

re: active desktop, i like it actually. specifically because it shows even when you do windows-d, or minimize all. no other 'desktop' widgets do this.

one program that works very well with active desktop is 'wallnote.com'. it'll be a shame to see this killed by vista.

I think I've used Active Desktop about three times in my time as a Windows user.  Each time was simply for the kicks and giggles associated with using a webpage as your desktop.  Sometimes it was useful, like a javascript doohickey or an embedded Flash file, but usually it was a joke, such as making Seizure Robots (http://underachievement.org/sr/) a coworker's desktop :)

I think Active Desktop was a cool idea, but from what I can tell, most of it's "productive" functionality will probably be replaced with gadgets in Vista.