naming conventions
Jason Kemp notes that Microsoft's choice of product names can have some unintended consequences: I don't know yet how I feel about the name Windows Vista, but it at least has some character to it. But Windows Presentation Foundation? Windows Communication Framework? Who wants to use
programming languages
Looking for something fun to do on family night? How about a friendly game of c-jump, the programming board game: Although the prospect of a computer programming board game sounds positively stultifying, there is a rich history of computer games based on programming. It’s not a programming game per
user experience
One of the biggest highlights of PDC 2005 was the first day keynote, when the Office 12 UI was unveiled. I don’t know if people realized the significance of what we saw at the time – but we had just witnessed the death of the main menu. There’s no
software development concepts
During the fantastic Monad session at PDC 2005,* Jeffrey Snover and Jim Truher illustrated the tradeoff between verbosity and conciseness: cp c:apples c:oranges -fo -r copy-item c:apples c:oranges -force -recurse Monad has a ton of aliases for common commands (e.g., echo is the same as
windows
1. If you’re lazy: 2. If you’re a contortionist: Shift + Ctrl + Esc 3. If you love modal dialogs: Ctrl + Alt + Del, then click or press the T key. 4. If you’re a ninja keyboard user: + R, taskman, Enter
It’s easy to fire off an email with barely any effort at all. And that’s exactly how much effort goes into most emails: none. Ole Eichhorn’s Tyranny of Email offers a succinct set of guidelines to avoid thoughtless email abuse: 1. Never criticize anyone in email. Avoid
c++
I’m not a big screensaver enthusiast per se, but one of my all time favorite screensavers is definitely Moire from the DirectX 8.1 SDK. It’s simple yet visually striking, and it works seamlessly on multiple monitors. It’s also hardware accelerated on each monitor without requiring a
software development concepts
In Waltzing with Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects, DeMarco and Lister outline the dangers of penalizing negative thinking: Once you’ve identified and quantified these risks, they can be managed just like the others. But getting them out on the table can be a problem. The culture of our
ui design
The top 8 reasons user interface design is in the stone age is more of a rant than a reasoned argument, but it’s still worth reading. If UI design is in the stone age, why are there at least two sites which document known UI patterns? 1. UI Patterns
security
Marcus Ranum, the inventor of the proxy firewall, brilliantly condenses why many security efforts are doomed from the start: they fall prey to the The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security : 1. Default Permit Also known as “on by default.” This one is huge, and it alone is why the
conferences
Courtesy of my employer, I have the privilege of attending this year’s Professional Developers Conference. I’ve been to a few trade shows, but this is the first technical conference I’ve ever attended. I arrive Monday night, and I’m definitely looking forward to it. Particularly since the
registry
Scott Hanselman’s Power User Windows Registry Tweaks has some excellent registry editing tweaks. I’ve spent the last few hours poring over those registry scripts, enhancing and combining them with some favorites of my own. Here are the results: * Open Command Window Here Adds a right-click menu to all