ericlaw

On Defaults

Yesterday, Chris Beard, the CEO of Mozilla, wrote an open letter to Microsoft complaining about Windows 10’s behavior related to default applications. Reactions were all over the board, but in my Twitter feed, at least, they mostly skewed against Mozilla. With the perspective of having been both inside and outside Microsoft, I feel compelled toContinue reading “On Defaults”

Stupid (useful) Windows Shell Tricks

RunAsUser Back in the Windows Vista timeframe, the existing RunAs verb for ShellExecute was changed. Instead of prompting the user to run the target as a different user (e.g. the experience you get when you Shift-Right-Click on an app) it instead would treat the call as “Run the target as an Elevated Administrator”. Well, whatContinue reading “Stupid (useful) Windows Shell Tricks”

An A+ HTTPS site for $20

Building a HTTPS-secured website is easier than it’s ever been.

Organizational Awareness

I’ve found myself a bit stalled in writing my memoir, so I’m going to post a few stories here in the hopes of breaking free of writer’s block… The use of first names and email aliases at Microsoft could easily lead to confusion for new employees. A few weeks into my first summer (1999) atContinue reading “Organizational Awareness”

Microsoft Edge Bugs and Omissions

I tweet about the new Microsoft Edge browser quite a lot. I wanted to have a blog post to collect some of the feedback I’ve provided so I have it in one place and can update as needed. Note: This post mostly focuses on the bad parts of Edge; there are plenty of good parts,Continue reading “Microsoft Edge Bugs and Omissions”

Zopfli All The Things

I’ve written about Zopfli quite a bit in the past, and even wrote a tool to apply it to PNG files. For fun, I had a look at one of the most optimized pages in the world: Google.com, through the lens of Zopfli. Here are the basic resources delivered by the Google homepage: This breakdownContinue reading “Zopfli All The Things”

What I Use–Software Edition

I’ll update this list from time-to-time. Criteria The #1 criteria for any software I use is first, do no harm. There’s a lot of great software out there that’s ruined by side-effects, including security problems, performance problems, advertising, and anything else that makes my computer worse for having it installed. In some cases, I’ve simplyContinue reading “What I Use–Software Edition”

Google Search Provider in Microsoft Edge

Back in the IE7 days, I built a simple Search Provider Builder that allowed IE users (and later users of other browsers) to add custom search engines to their browser without any changes to the site. Trivia: This hour-long little prototype soon led to a formal effort to put this tool on the IEAddons site;Continue reading “Google Search Provider in Microsoft Edge”

Ad Blocking – Site Reaction Gallery

As expected, sites are ramping up their responses to ad-blocking:

What I Read–Book Edition

This is a list of books I’ve read recently, with a Twitter-fitting review for each. I’ll update it periodically. Fiction The Martian – I greatly enjoyed this book; I was planning to try to get it some attention, but just before I tweeted, I learned it’s about to be a major motion picture. Oops. :-)Continue reading “What I Read–Book Edition”