In the late 1990s, the Windows Shell and Internet Explorer teams introduced a bunch of brilliant and intricate designs that allowed extension of the shell and the browser to handle scenarios beyond what those built by Microsoft itself. For instance, Internet Explorer supported the notion of pluggable protocols (“What if some protocol, say, FTPS, becomesContinue reading “Leaky Abstractions”
Tag Archives: Windows
Sandboxing vs. Elevated Browsing (As Administrator)
The Web Browser is the most security-critical application on most users’ systems– it accepts untrusted input from servers anywhere in the world, parses that input using dozens to hundreds of parsers, and renders the result locally as fast as it can. For performance reasons, almost all code in almost all browsers is written in memory-unsafeContinue reading “Sandboxing vs. Elevated Browsing (As Administrator)”
ShellExecute Doesn’t
My oldest supported Windows application is a launcher app named SlickRun, and it’s ~24 years old this year. I haven’t done much to maintain it over the last few years, although it’s now available in 64-bit and runs great on Windows 10. (Thanks go to Embarcadero, who now offer a free “Community” edition of Delphi, theContinue reading “ShellExecute Doesn’t”
Troubleshooting Windows 10 Bluescreens
I recently bought a Dell XPS 8900 desktop system with Windows 10. It ran okay for a while, but after enabling Hyper-V, every few minutes the system would freeze for a few seconds and then reboot with no explanation. Looking at the Event Viewer’s Windows Logs > System revealed that the system had bugchecked (blueContinue reading “Troubleshooting Windows 10 Bluescreens”
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”
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”
On Chromebooks
I spent the summer of 1994 working minimum wage (a princely $4.25/hour), testing electronics, saving all of my pay to buy a beast of a computer. That September, I entered my sophomore year of high school and plunked down my saved ~$3000 to become the proud owner of my first Windows PC, a Comtrade PentiumContinue reading “On Chromebooks”
text/plain 