Many of you from old ages might see the classical blue Windows blue screen before.Do you still remember the most famous Windows blue screen incident during a presentation of a Windows 98 beta by Bill Gates at COMDEX on April 20 1998. But do you know the history of blue screen? John Vert, an ex-Windoes NT kernel guy, shared the story on Quora. Back in 1991 John Vert wrote the original code for Windows NT 3.1 that put the video screen back into text mode and the routines to put text on it (and a truly gnarly bit of code it was!). He used the white on blue colors for two reasons.The MIPS wor...

Windows brought us into PC era, it becomes the most widely used OS in the past 20 or so years. But unfortunately there are still many people hate Windows. Is it because we may encounter the notorious blue screen issue now and then? People hate Microsoft Windows for the same reason they hate Comcast, United Airlines, or Paypal.Once Microsoft gained a dominant market position, it completely and utterly took its customers for granted. It became arrogant and complacent, causing customers to feel unappreciated and victimized.This is nothing surprising. Once a company is assured of its market p...

Getting the 16×16 and 32×32 icons on Windows is relatively easy and is often as simple as one call to ExtractIconEx.However, getting the extra large (48×48) and jumbo (256×256) icons introduced respectively by XP and Vista is slighly more complex. This is normally done by:Getting the file information, in particular the icon index, for the given file using SHGetFileInfoRetrieving the system image list where all the icons are storedCasting the image list to an IImageList interface and getting the icon from thereBelow is the code I’m using in Appetizer to retrieve the extra...

Last night, the 2013 Microsoft Build Developer Conference started in San Francisco. The highlight of the first day is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the release of Windows 8.1 Preview . The final version will be released in November and he also mentioned that there would be over 300 updates on the new OS.Now let's summarize 10 major updates of the new OS.1. Classical desktop modeAfter getting a lot of feedback from users, Microsoft adds a new setting. Users can choose to start in classical desktop mode instead of the touch screen like in Windows 8 when the computer boots up.2. Apps auto...

IE won the browser war before Chrome appeared with the help of anti-competitive practices. But with the appearance of more and more easy-to-use and fast browsers, people start to hate IE and leave IE. It seems IE is not a product of modern age. Do IE developers feel guilty about this?Everything is contextual. The browser that most people hate today is IE6, which, at the time was one of the best browsers on the planet (it didn't win the Browser Wars, Round One, by accident). It was built on "internet-time" before a lot of the security issues it suffered from were even well-understood in the ind...

There is some recent change for a built-in tool on Windows 10 where the Snipping Tool is moving. Snipping Tool is a tool on Windows for taking screenshots and editing screenshots taken. But now it's moving to a new tool called Snip & Sketch which has enhanced features.Now if you try to launch Snipping Tool, you will notice there is a notification telling that the Snipping tool is moving to a new tool called Snip & Sketch.And you can click Try Snip & Sketch to launch the new tool.The new tool has a new modern face and it has a clear difference as the old tool where it has a clear in...

Microsoft's Windows 8 RTM version now is available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. This RTM version will be the same as the final Windows 8 release version. Windows 8 may be released on 26th October.Microsoft Software Assurance users will be able to get RTM version of the new system on 16th August. Volume License customers without Software Assurance will be able to purchase Windows 8 through Microsoft Volume License Resellers starting from 1st September.. Although this version is available for developers and IT professionals, ordinary consumers have to wait until 26th October.Mic...

Microsoft is a typical IT company of the last century - a huge strength, but turned a little less sensitive. Now, Microsoft is trying to change the tradition of no connection between home desktop and mobile system developers, the best indicator of this effort is their design.Microsoft products, especially software products, are now gradually using a simple, plain and neat appearance: Metro. But if you think the Metro is just on Windows 8, Windows Phone, the application market and Xbox Live, then in fact you should also see more things. Microsoft's designers explained in a recent discussion tha...