Staring into the COM Abyss
I remember stumbling over shell and namespace extensions (without knowing the names of those concepts) back when I was coding in VB in high school - and being impressed how deep programs were apparently able to integrate into &quot;the OS&quot;. (Nevermind that it was just the shell).<p>So it&#x27;s really amazing to see giving step-by-step examples of how a namespace extension could be implemented.<p>I remember in particular that MS Outlook implemented their desktop icon as a namespace extension instead of an ordinary shortcut. I never understand why it was done this way, as the icon didn&#x27;t behave particularly different than a normal shortcut: The only practical differences were that it did not allow you to look up the exe path and that you could not remove it from the desktop short of uninstalling Outlook.<p>I wonder if this was done purely for nerd cred in much the same manner as the author of the OP - or if some overzealous manager had an irrational fear of users deleting the &quot;Outlook&quot; icon and ordered their team to do anything in their power prevent that...