Rob Relyea: Windows

Handy Windows Tip: shift-right click in explorer...copy path...open cmd here

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:51:41 GMT

Snowball shows "Copy path" and "Open command window here" shortcuts from Windows Vista's explorer.

Windows needs more location awareness

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:39:39 GMT

When I am working at home, why doesn't Windows know that I should have a different default printer?

Update:

I've sent this feedback to the Windows team via email as well...
Billy Anders sent me a pointer to "Net Profiles", which I'll start trying.

Ian Griffiths: UAC- Don't be part of the problem

Wed, 09 May 2007 23:47:36 GMT

Great write up from Ian on UAC and how Windows developers should not turn it off.

SideBar shortcut key: windowkey + space

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:56:24 GMT

When I want to know the date, I now just press windowskey + space, which brings the sidebar to the top of the screen and shows me my nice date gadget.

With XP, if I recall, I think I used to double click the clock.

Windows Vista has Nice Games

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 13:54:41 GMT

There has always been a large gap between the games built into Windows and those that you could buy for Windows. I'm impressed with the games in Windows Vista. A major improvement over what we had before!

A partial list:

FreeCell: sizes to my screen, has sound and better animations...a much better experience.
Chess Titans: my son just played this last night...nice 3d interface, helps the user understand what moves are available. The all important feature: undo.
Hold Em: This comes as a downloadable Ultimate Extra if you get "Vista Ultimate" edition.
...

Without doing a thorough analysis, all the games seem to be able to do:

adaptable sizing
saving your game automatically, and restarting at the same place
sounds, animations - to make the experience more lifelike

Feedback

Do you have any new favorite games? How about features that the games did? What else would you want to see?

Me - I'd want to be able to play Hold 'Em on the network against opponents...

HDView - zoom forever (or almost) into a photo

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 05:06:36 GMT

Fun demo from MS Research! [via Robert]

Countdown to Vista

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:08:49 GMT

I just put the Vista launch countdown gagdet on my blog and my Vista sidebar...

Midnight shopping?

On August 24th, 1995 I lived in Chicago and worked for Microsoft. It was fun being part of that launch and going out at midnight and seeing the excitement that Windows 95 brought.

Now, having helped build Windows Vista, I'm excited to yet again head to the stores at midnight...

Scoble on Vista

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:19:39 GMT

The other day I saw a post that Scoble wrote about "First day of post-Microsoft sadness"

In it, he discussed Vista compared to our earlier vision for it:

The UI doesn’t look as cool. There isn’t any .NET code in Vista, which is a complete shift from what I saw back then.

Anyway, I posted a comment or two (#15, #19). It is easier for me to find this if I record it in my blog...

Emotional videos leading towards Vista

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 20:43:23 GMT

Sriram Krishnan tells a great story of the impact of PDC 2003 and 2005 inspirational videos on him and his life.

I hadn't seen those videos in quite a while! Loved them then...and it is fantastic to see them now that we have completed the journey to Windows Vista and .Net Framework 3.0.

I have to say that DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) at Microsoft does a great job with those inspirational videos.

Windows Vista beta2

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 13:35:49 GMT

I'm excited and nervous about Windows Vista.

Excited about a bunch of great investments the Windows team has made.

Nervous about a few areas which still need more work.

All Vista (Almost)

Vista is the OS I'm using on all my work machines. I plan on testing it on my home computers very soon as well.

With Windows XP, for the past several years, I blame myself for any bad bugs that I should have personally found before we shipped it...(Outlook Express and how it works with 2 hotmail accounts in one profile, etc...)

Have you tested what is important to you with Vista?

Have you reported all the problems you found?

Vista Experience

The more I use Vista, the more I discover that I like.

I also agree with Scott Finnie (Computerworld), that some areas of Windows take some steps backwards each version too.

I'm not going to spend my time now going deep into my likes or dislikes...there are a bunch of reviewers digging in.

I am seeing great improvement as new builds come out...I want to help the team achieve all our goals for quality and date. We're working hard. We're balancing developers from areas that are "done" to areas that need more work. People are installing builds often, reporting bugs, running "stress". Normal stuff we do when we ship software.

Vista Reviews

Before writing this post I just read a review on Vista:

6/27/2006 - Visual Tour: 20 Reasons Why Windows Vista Will Be Your Next OS

That article referenced a previous article - focusing on the negative side of things as well:

6/1/2006 - Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won't Like About Windows Vista

Good to read both the positive and negative side of things.

Hopefully we listen to all the negative things and improve them as much as possible before ship.

One of My Favorite Features

Launching apps by typing their name in the "start search" textbox:

OneNote

I don't need to create shortcuts, I don't need to navigate my hierarchy, etc...