Monthly Archives: September 2006

Tech Talk – Debugging using the free Microsoft Debuggers

Posted on September 28, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

Just putting up the materials that I presented tonight.  It was a good discussion, although a much smaller crowd than I’m used to.  Hard to compete with a good football game sometimes. 🙂   Thanks to everyone for coming – … Continue reading →

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Andrew McGlinchey interviewed about Vista Control Panel

Posted on September 28, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

This blog keeps being interesting – just made it into my reading list.  While reading it today, I stumbled across an interview with Andrew McGlinchey – who works with me on Active Content Wizard (aka Guided Help) about his work … Continue reading →

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Pre-caching symbols

Posted on September 27, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

Tomorrow, I’ll be presenting a tech-talk on using windbg to meet common debugging needs.  One of the big things that any presenter needs to do is remove things that could go wrong – first up on my list is caching … Continue reading →

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Interviewing at BYU on the 27th, Debugging Tech talk on the 28th

Posted on September 26, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

I enjoy working with recruiting and try to work with them as often as possible.  It’s not my real job, but it’s something that I really enjoy (putting good people together with a good company).  A side perk is that … Continue reading →

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Guided Help featured at the Company Meeting

Posted on September 22, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

It’s always gratifying to see how often Guided Help is demo’d to folks.  Because nobody wants to demo something that stinks and there’s tons of stuff to choose from here at Microsoft.  It’s often a surprise to us when it … Continue reading →

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Daring Fireball: Ronco Spray-On Usability

Posted on September 20, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

An interesting treatment of creating usable software.  I certainly found it to be true that creating a really usable version of Guided Help was a LOT more difficult than simply creating a functional one. I remember watching a usability study … Continue reading →

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WMI Shell Folder (day two) – Tracing Interface names

Posted on September 20, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

Well it turns out that I just wasn’t very observant – my dll was getting loaded and failing immediately.  So the first step towards getting a working shell folder implementation is done – I’ve built a failing one.  To move … Continue reading →

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ACW catchphrase – Users that support themselves…

Posted on September 20, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

http://blogs.technet.com/james/archive/2006/09/18/457209.aspx – James Senior blogs about Guided Help   I love all the different things that people come up with to talk about Guided Help.  virtual whiz kid, kung fu, users that support themselves.   Looks like I have some competition … Continue reading →

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Talking about Why Microsoft Engineers Should Not Name Products

Posted on September 15, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

Funny commentary on the clever names that developers love.  I think GLEE is pretty cool, actually.  I think it would be a great way to visualize a complicated Guided Help flow.  But yeah, I’m not a huge fan of clever … Continue reading →

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Debugger command of the day !sym noisy

Posted on September 14, 2006 by jamesfinnigan

While debugging from home I’m using the public symbols which are downloaded from the web.  Sometimes they don’t match (right now I’m using a pre-release build), and it’s nice to know why.  !sym noisy tells me why a pdb does or … Continue reading →

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