Larry Osterman's WebLog
Just another Developer Network site
Three years ago today (August 2006)
Back in the summer of 2006, we were all busy trying to finish Windows Vista. I actually spent most...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 08/05/2009
A few of my favorite Win7 Sound features – Capture Monitor (aka Listen to…)
The capture monitor is a feature that allows you to listen to a portable media player (or any other...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 08/04/2009
Two years ago today (August 2007)
I was working on Win7 M1, working on the Capture Monitor feature (which enables the ability to...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 08/04/2009
A few of my favorite Win7 Sound features – UI refinements
Well, we shipped Windows 7, and now I’d like to talk about a few of my favorite features that were...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 08/03/2009
One year ago today (August 2008)…
I was finishing Windows 7 M3 (the build which eventually was delivered at the PDC). During M3, I...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 08/03/2009
6.1.7600.16385
‘nuf said.
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 07/22/2009
Tonight’s the night, won’t be just any night.
Ok, I’m a day late on this one… Daniel’s summer show opened last night: West Side...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 07/19/2009
Thinking about Windows Build numbers
There’s been an ongoing thread internally speculating about the windows build number that will...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 07/08/2009
Thinking about Last Checkin Chicken
Raymond Chen’s post today started me thinking about “Last Check-in Chicken” again....
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/30/2009
What’s wrong with this code, part 26 – the answer
Yesterday I posted a code snippet from inside a real piece of code inside the client side of a...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/29/2009
What’s wrong with this code, part 26 – a real-world example
This is an example of a real-world bug that was recently fixed in an unreleased Microsoft...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/25/2009
Windows 7 fixes the PlaySound(XXX, SND_MEMORY|SND_ASYNC) anti-pattern
A number of times in the past, I’ve mentioned that the PlaySound(xxx, xxx,...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/24/2009
Good News! strlen isn’t a banned API after all.
We were doing some code reviews on the new Win7 SDK samples the other day and one of the code...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 06/23/2009
What was Valorie doing last weekend? Competing at the Sweet Adelines Region 13 competition…
And her performance video just got posted to YouTube… They came in 8th out of 15 in the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 04/06/2009
Well Hello Daniel!
Gaarggghh. I can't believe I didn't write about this. Tonight is the first night of previews for...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/08/2009
Delay Load is not a good way to check for functionality
On my previous post, Koro made the following comment: “Don't ever check windows versions. ...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/06/2009
Checking file versions is surprisingly hard.
I was wandering around the web the other day and ran into this post. In general I don’t have...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 03/05/2009
PlaySound(xxx, SND_MEMORY | SND_ASYNC) is almost always a bad idea.
Whenever you submit a crash report to OCA, a bug gets filed in the relevant product database and...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 02/19/2009
Everyone wants a shiny new UI
Surfing around the web, I often run into web sites that contain critiques of various aspects of...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/29/2009
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...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/13/2009
XKCD tries Windows 7 and loves it!
Well I thought it was cute :).
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/09/2009
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...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/08/2009
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...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 01/06/2009
The ducking whitepaper is now online
I just got an email indicating that the powers that be have just published the Ducking (automatic...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/25/2008
I get more spam :)
I just received this phishing letter, I liked it simply because it was so remarkably brazen: -- Dear...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/21/2008
What’s wrong with this code, part 25 – the answers
Yesterday I described a very real bug in some of the Windows UI....
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/18/2008
What’s wrong with this code, part 25
Wow, 25 already. This one’s pretty straightforward. Once again, it’s a UI issue, since I’ve been...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/17/2008
If you live in the US, don’t forget to vote today
It’s a really big deal, regardless of your political persuasion. Already the MSFT internal...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 11/04/2008
I'm in LA!
I just got into LA and checked into my hotel for the PDC. The flight was uneventful, while I was...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/27/2008
Chrome is fixing the file download bug…
I just noticed that Ryan Naraine has written that Google’s fixed the file download bug in...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/20/2008
Engineering 7: A view from the bottom
About 2 months ago, Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan started the “Engineering Windows 7”...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/16/2008
What really happens when you shutdown Windows?
About a year or so ago, I wrote a post that talked about the Windows shutdown experience. A couple...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/09/2008
What’s wrong with this code, part 24 – the answer
In my last post, I included a snippet from an MSDN article written by Kenny Kerr. The snippet...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/07/2008
What’s wrong with this code part 24 (From an MSDN article)?
I ran into this bug earlier today and realized that it’d make an awesome “What’s wrong with this...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/06/2008
The common control library sometimes sends an NMCUSTOMDRAW message for the NM_CUSTOMDRAW notification.
I just fixed a bug in our UI that was caused by a misunderstanding of the API contract for the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 10/03/2008
Ok, I’m strange…
I was looking at the front page of MSNBC and ran into this picture: (image copyright Sebastiao...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/30/2008
DrawThemeText doesn’t really support the DT_CALCRECT format value
I just noticed this while working on a bug fix. We have some code that attempts to determine the...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/30/2008
Why specify SND_NODEFAULT when calling PlaySound?
Because the alternative is often much worse. Several months ago, I got a bug report that if you...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/25/2008
They just announced my PDC talk, so I guess I can mention at least the title of the talk.
The PDC folks just announced a host of Windows 7 related PDC talks, one of which is mine. The title...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/24/2008
Why call PlaySound(NULL, NULL, SND_NODEFAULT)?
Someone just wandered over to my office and he had noticed the following pattern in his code:...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/15/2008
See you in LA in October!
I just got word that the talk we’d proposed for the PDC in October was approved, so I’m...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/11/2008
What’s wrong with this code, Part 23 – The Answers
My last post was all about a problem with what appeared to be some really simple ATL code. It turns...
Author: Larry Osterman [MSFT] Date: 09/08/2008