In the Trenches

Internet Explorer has this feature that lets you add search commands to the address bar. For example, with some registry hacks you can make it so that typing "imdb Lord of the Rings" will do an IMDB search. The registry schema is described in more detail Read More...

I just finished reading Vonnegut's latest book, A Man Without a Country , a collection of short essays by this national treasure. On the back it says, "Thank God, Kurt Vonnegut has broken his promise that he will never write another book." Indeed! It Read More...

I'd like as a baseline to briefly discuss some of the high-level concepts of the shell storage architecture. This topic is discussed in greater detail elsewhere (here too), but I'm going use more modern terminology and paint only a conceptual and perhaps more idealistic picture than actually exists. Read More...

I like keyboard shortcuts that put focus in commonly-used edit boxes: Ctrl+E will put focus in the "search" box in Explorer for Windows Vista Beta 1. Alt+D will put focus in the address bar in IE. F11 will put focus in the "find a contact" box in Outlook, Read More...

People who know me would probably agree that I am hardly a stooge for marketing. And although I am in general very proud to work for Microsoft, there are definitely things about Microsoft that I’m ashamed of. But one thing that I’ve been especially impressed Read More...