Chris 的个人资料Chris Russell's Space照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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Win7 Beta 1 Goes LiveNice to see the positive response to the first public download of Win7 Beta.
I use Win7 every day here at work on my main development workstation and on my laptop. Generally, I've been happy with the OS and impressed by the progress made by the Windows team. For those of you who know me, I'm really hard to satisfy when to computers and software (this despite the fact that I work for Microsoft on the Windows team :)). Broken RSS AggregationHmm... Looks like something has gone wrong with the RSS feeds displayed on this page. Seems like they have all been reset to pull from the New York Times. Windows Vista Slideshow Screen ResolutionThe "Windows Photo Gallery" application bundled with Windows Vista supports a full-screen slideshow mode that sometimes tries to be a little too smart about choosing an optimal screen resolution for slideshow viewing. Specifically, the slideshow viewer may decide to reduce the screen resolution for full-screen viewing when invoked and doesn't expose any obvious way to override this default behavior.
For most people this is not a huge problem (if they notice it at all). Discriminating viewers may note a degradation in image quality. But you really run into a problem if your video adapter is driving a display device that (a) isn't recognized by plug-and-play (thus defaulting Window's knowledge of your dislay's actual capabilities to "Generic PnP Monitor" which is assumed to support a wide variety of different video modes) (b) doesn't actually support the display mode automaticlly selected by "Windows Photo Gallery" for full-screen slideshow viewing.
In my case, this Vista box is using an NVidia Quadro FX1000 (a dated but still kick-ass video adapter) connected to a Samsung DLP HDTV which I've configured for full 1080p (1920x1080 @ 60Hz) viewing on the desktop. However, when I flip to slideshow mode I'm toast - the Samsung supports only a view different display resolutions and the one chosen as I enter slideshow mode is not supported. The display flickers and then bluescreens (Samsung video input not detected NOT a Vista BSOD). So for me on this particular PC configuration slideshow just doesn't work out-of-the-box. Parenthetically, the standard Photo Viewer screensaver bundled with Vista is just a wrapper around Windows Photo Gallery's slideshow mode so it too is busted for this particular configuration.
Luckily it's not hard to fix.
Refer to the Windows Knowledge Base Article 930102 for specific details.
Summary:
Add the DWORD value WinSATScore = 500 (decimal) to the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\SlideShow key in the registry to instruct Windws Photo Gallery to use the desktop display settings when switching into slideshow mode. This solves both the image quality and the unsupported display resolution problems. ObjectGraph Web 2.0 Dictionary/ThesuarusI was customizing an installation of Opera and stumbled across an optional side-panel dictionary plug-in from ObjectGraph.com. Basically, they present an AJAX-powered web form that retrieves/displays dictionary queries for each character you type. Even over my crappy HughesNet satellite "broadband" connection the form is responsive enough to be useful. There's also an online Thesuarus.
Windows Media Player 11 Taskbar SettingsBooting a clean install of Vista Ultimate, the first time you minimize Windows Media Player (WMP) 11 you're prompted to decide if you want WMP to display itself as either a standard taskbar task icon OR a taskbar-embedded mini-player. I elect the taskbar-embedded mini-player-on-minimize option and continue on. Later, I decide I prefer the standard taskbar icon-on-minimize display option because restoring the mini-player window requires a precise mouse action. But how to restore the standard behavior?
After drilling through all the WMP option menu dialog boxes I've come up with nothing. WMP prompts you but doesn't appear to expose the setting anywhere. As with most things Winows, the work-around is trivial if not a little counterintuitive. The WMP mini-player embedded in the taskbar is a so-called taskbar toolbar. Toggle mini-player vs. standard-taskbar-icon-on-minimize behavior as follows:
Live Spaces and IE 7 Crash...Here's a good one: If I log into my Live Spaces account and attempt to change the layout, IE7 crashes with an unhandled exception every time (running on Windows XP). Hmm... maybe I'll submit some feedback. Or file a bug report when I get into the office tomorrow... Xcerion XiosXIOS, an "XML Operating System" from Swedish Xcerion is an interesting system. However, XIOS is not an operating system. Rather, it is a fancy scripting host that sits atop a real operating system. Safe Labels in C++An excellent new article on Artima C++ describes techiques for leveraging macros and templates to perform compile-time validation on normally error-prone (i.e. dangerous) bit-level manipulations.
Live Spaces and CookiesImagine my annoyance to find that I need to relax my IE 7 cookie security in order to log into Windows Live Spaces.
IE7 Privacy was: High
- Blocks all cookies from websites that do not have a compact privacy policy
- Blocks cookies that save information that can be used to contact you without your explicit consent
Okay - I don't know what a compact privacy policy is... But whatever. The second item isn't really clear to me either. But again, whatever. I don't want people to contact me without my consent so don't allow it. But this doesn't work with Windows Live Spaces. You can't log in unless you relax the restrictions on cookies.
IE Private now: Medium
- Blocks third-party cookies that do not have a compact privacy policy
- Blocks third-party cookies that save information that can be used to contact you without your explicit consent
- Blocks first-party cookies that save information that can be used to contact you without your implicit consent
So now I can log into Windows Live Spaces. Why can't I log in with cookie security set to High? Anyone? Stroustrup Talk on C++0xA very interesting talk by Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup given earlier this month at University of Waterloo about C++0x. Paint .NETI've been using a shareware photo/image manipulation software application called Paint .NET that I first learned about on the Microsoft-internal toolbox intranet website (Paint .NET was originally written as an MS-sponsored school project if memory serves me correctly). Anyway, it's a solid piece of work and well worth checking out (it reminds of the old versions of PaintShop Pro from JASC software before they ruined it by trying to compete with Adobe PhotoShop).
http://www.getpaint.net/ Microsoft Surface ComputingMicrosoft has announced "Surface" - a table-based user interface that leverages DLP projection, video cameras and a Vista-based software stack to provide a really cool set of interactive possibilities. Check out the promotional videos at http://www.microsoft.com/surface/ Excellent In-Depth Vista Review on ars technicaars technica has published an excellent in-depth review of Windows Vista that provides details on most of the major enhancements over Windows XP SP2.
Useful Windows Shell TrickWhen resizing the width of a column in a Windows application (e.g. Explorer) you typically left-click-drag the column header to the desired width. Intead of left-click-dragging the column header, try double clicking the column divider. Move the mouse cursor over the column divider (the icon will change to the resize icon), and then double-click to maximimze the width of the column to the left of the divider. "The Windows (Vista) Shutdown Menu crapfest"Here's an interesting blog entry by former Microsoft employee Moishe Lettvin that details his frustrations working as a developer on the Vista Shutdown "Feature" team. I found the comments to be particularly interesting.
New Stroustrup Interview posted on TRMIT's Technology Review has posted a great interview with Bjarne Stroustrup entitled "The Problem with Programming". It's well worth a read regardless of your like / dislike for the C++ programming language.
Windows Live 3D EarthI was messing around with Microsoft Live's new 3D Earth application on Local Live yesterday. Man is it cool. Way better than Google Earth. I particularly like the ability to fly over the surface at an angle - a perspective that allows you to gleen the topology of the mountains around here. Check it out for yourself (broadband definitely required). Vista Goes GoldYesterday morning the last of the required signoffs were completed and Windows Vista was released to manufacturing. Here's some additional information on the Vista RTM
So this is a big deal for most of the people I work with who have been slaving away for years to get this release out the door. I've been running Vista on my laptop and on my machines here in the office for several months now and have to say that it's much nicer than XP. It's actually pretty cool. I like the new version of Internet Explorer, and Office 12 is slick as well. For me personally, Vista RTM really marks the beginning of my life here at Microsoft working on Windows Vienna. All things considered I'm glad that I decided to join Microsoft and make the jump in the summer of 2006. There are great things going on here... Convergence of Computing and BiologyMany predict that computing and molecular biology will ultimately converge. iGEM 2006 makes you wonder how far away this really is...
Windows Vista + IE7 Keyboard ShortcutsHere are some public links that document Windows Vista and IE7 keyboard shortcuts:
Many of keyboard shortcuts listed in the links above are nothing new and have been around for years. However, there are a few that are new - at least to me. Of particular utility is the Quick Launch shortcut that allows you to launch applications with icons in your Quick Launch toolbar (typically docked in the Task Tar (aka Start Bar)). It works like this: Suppose you have a shortcut in your Quick Launch toolbar that you click to launch Internet Explorer. Suppose it's the forth icon. You can launch IE by using the keyboard shortcut WIN + 4. More generally WIN + # will invoke the #th shortcut in the Quick Launch toolbar. That's useful! |
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