5 ms·

The Windows Context Menu – Is It a Lost Cause?

celadin 3y ago
Great content. However, the scroll manipulation on this site is atrocious. You can't hold down-arrow to go down - it only moves the content by a pixel every second. Insanity. End this, Enderman.
DustinBrett 3y ago
NirSoft's ShellExView & ShellMenuView are good tools for tweaking that menu.
- suddenclarity 3y ago
  I'm surprised something similar isn't already part of PowerToys. It seems to be a common complaint, with software cluttering it. Chrome browser even more so since they introduced a randomly scrolling menu so one can't even see all the options.
  - wink 3y ago
    Modern powertoys have jumped the shark, it's now a single tool with many functions that puts itself into autostart and has nagging autoupdates. I still had the old version (like sysinternals) in mind, a collection of small hassle free tools.
- Thoreandan 3y ago
  Also Autoruns from SysInternals ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/aut... ) "Explorer" tab lets you un-check / check individual entries.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  I use 'Easy context menu' (aka EC_menu) https://www.sordum.org/7615/easy-context-menu-v1-6/ https://www.sordum.org/7615/easy-context-menu-v1-6/
ryukoposting 3y ago
Very informative. I finally divorced myself from Windows a couple months ago, but this would have been great information to have. I don't think the criticisms of Windows are particularly well-founded. To be honest, this seems like far less of a mess than any number of other parts of Windows (Win32 API comes to mind) Some notes regarding the site itself: I like the use of the Win7 icons. The angled headings are fun. It looks nice, overall. Animated backgrounds are bad, please stop using them. Also, if my mouse is sitting in the side gutters of the page, I can't scroll with the scroll wheel - the mouse has to be in the middle of the page. That's irritating. It seems like you're trying to be too clever with the CSS. It's just a blog. The cheeky CSS antics get in the way of it being a good blog.
dang 3y ago
[stub for offtopicness]
- cududa 3y ago
  "The Windows context menu is... poorly made." That website is poorly made. What's with the scrolling. Anyway. Yes. It's a very very complicated software with hooks decades back. That's a feature not a bug. He's mad that it's complicated to customize, or really, understand and build UI customization for, including third-party applications implementations of them? What? People still use mission critical software from 30 years ago that relies on their old implementations of context menus. So what?
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    How true is that considering the older, complete context menu is basically hidden behind the newer context menu in win11? Clearly, they have no issues with over riding "mission critical implementations" (if they exist) of the older context menu so why not allow actually customizing it even more?
  - observationist 3y ago
    I've never seen a good, reasonable use for scrollbars being made available to screw around with. If you build websites, don't muck up basic UI elements like the scrollbar, or go full screen, or do horizontal scrolling, or take over scrolling behaviors. Stuff like this site seems like half art project, half social experiment. I'm not sure the article author should be speaking with such certainty and authority on the subject of what constitutes "good" UI. A lot of what makes interface elements effective is predictability. Context menus are boring, consistent, and predictable - or they should be. You shouldn't ever be in a situation where you right click on something and say "wow! that's beautiful! that menu is so amazingly well done!" Software is intended to do things. If your interface gets in the way of things being done, then the interface is the wrong tool for the job. Making things flashy or prioritizing aesthetics over functionality for the sake of appearances makes every element you co-opt automatically the wrong tool for the job, regardless of how "pretty" it might be. If your site takes over scrollbars, the correct response to "what do you think of the custom scrollbars?" should be "wow, I didn't even notice a thing."
joegibbs 3y ago
If it was up to me I'd make adding options to the context menu something that you can't do without specifically choosing to in the control panel. Applications could supply context options to the OS but those shouldn't be displayed without the user going in and allowing each one specifically.
- kalleboo 3y ago
  Funny enough Microsoft has already had this battle with the Start menu https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030903-00/?p=42673 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030903-00/?p=42...
  - NoPicklez 3y ago
    That's a great little blog post I forgot about what the torrent of links that would find themselves in the IE favourites page
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    Funny enough the program what did found the way to add itself to the pinned list on the Task Bar is.. Google Chrome.
  - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
    What's actually sad is that Microsoft Edge and its new features are literally doing all of that right now.
nxobject 3y ago
As an aside, Enderman gets up to wild Windows shenanigans on his YouTube channel – things like getting Windows 11 to run on a P4, jailbreaking Windows S mode, etc. It's some fun light entertainment if you're into that sort of tinkering.
- samtheDamned 3y ago
  Wanted to say this too. They have a really good knowledge of ways to dig into Windows and I look forward to future blog posts
somat 3y ago
The first time I used the context button intentionally was when I got around to binding it as the compose key. As a bit of a tangent the X11 compose system is a really great way to enter less often used characters. Here is a bit of a tutorial, note this is probably openbsd specific. in ~/.xsession bind the context key xmodmap -e 'keysym Menu = Multi_key' in ~/.XCompose include the locale specific compose dir(in my case this is /usr/X11R6/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose) and set up some of your own include "%L" <Multi_key> <w> <e> <b> : "\xf0\x9f\x95\xb8" # spiderweb Now hit the menu key then w then e then b and you get a nice spider web
X-Cubed 3y ago
In regard to the limitations of the command line syntax, Raymond Chen discussed this recently: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240215-00/?p=109407 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240215-00/?p=10...
pjmlp 3y ago
When Microsoft refactored the context menu on Windows 11, I had high hopes that the new programming model would move away from writing context menu handlers in COM/C++, eventually using out-of-process handlers that could be implemented in .NET, any other compiled language. Nope, moving away from bare bones COM is too much to ask for WinDev, and already failed multiple times (.NET's original purpose, Longhorn, WinRT/UWP). A lost cause indeed.
arcastroe 3y ago
Is there any way to "show more options" by default on the windows 11 context menu? I often right click files to open with sublime, but that option is hidden behind "show more".

Great content. However, the scroll manipulation on this site is atrocious. You can't hold down-arrow to go down - it only moves the content by a pixel every second. Insanity. End this, Enderman.

DustinBrett 3y ago

NirSoft's ShellExView & ShellMenuView are good tools for tweaking that menu.

suddenclarity 3y ago
I'm surprised something similar isn't already part of PowerToys. It seems to be a common complaint, with software cluttering it. Chrome browser even more so since they introduced a randomly scrolling menu so one can't even see all the options.
- wink 3y ago
  Modern powertoys have jumped the shark, it's now a single tool with many functions that puts itself into autostart and has nagging autoupdates. I still had the old version (like sysinternals) in mind, a collection of small hassle free tools.
Thoreandan 3y ago
Also Autoruns from SysInternals ( https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/aut... ) "Explorer" tab lets you un-check / check individual entries.
NikkiA 3y ago
I use 'Easy context menu' (aka EC_menu) https://www.sordum.org/7615/easy-context-menu-v1-6/ https://www.sordum.org/7615/easy-context-menu-v1-6/

ryukoposting 3y ago

Very informative. I finally divorced myself from Windows a couple months ago, but this would have been great information to have. I don't think the criticisms of Windows are particularly well-founded. To be honest, this seems like far less of a mess than any number of other parts of Windows (Win32 API comes to mind) Some notes regarding the site itself: I like the use of the Win7 icons. The angled headings are fun. It looks nice, overall. Animated backgrounds are bad, please stop using them. Also, if my mouse is sitting in the side gutters of the page, I can't scroll with the scroll wheel - the mouse has to be in the middle of the page. That's irritating. It seems like you're trying to be too clever with the CSS. It's just a blog. The cheeky CSS antics get in the way of it being a good blog.

dang 3y ago

[stub for offtopicness]

cududa 3y ago
"The Windows context menu is... poorly made." That website is poorly made. What's with the scrolling. Anyway. Yes. It's a very very complicated software with hooks decades back. That's a feature not a bug. He's mad that it's complicated to customize, or really, understand and build UI customization for, including third-party applications implementations of them? What? People still use mission critical software from 30 years ago that relies on their old implementations of context menus. So what?
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  How true is that considering the older, complete context menu is basically hidden behind the newer context menu in win11? Clearly, they have no issues with over riding "mission critical implementations" (if they exist) of the older context menu so why not allow actually customizing it even more?
- observationist 3y ago
  I've never seen a good, reasonable use for scrollbars being made available to screw around with. If you build websites, don't muck up basic UI elements like the scrollbar, or go full screen, or do horizontal scrolling, or take over scrolling behaviors. Stuff like this site seems like half art project, half social experiment. I'm not sure the article author should be speaking with such certainty and authority on the subject of what constitutes "good" UI. A lot of what makes interface elements effective is predictability. Context menus are boring, consistent, and predictable - or they should be. You shouldn't ever be in a situation where you right click on something and say "wow! that's beautiful! that menu is so amazingly well done!" Software is intended to do things. If your interface gets in the way of things being done, then the interface is the wrong tool for the job. Making things flashy or prioritizing aesthetics over functionality for the sake of appearances makes every element you co-opt automatically the wrong tool for the job, regardless of how "pretty" it might be. If your site takes over scrollbars, the correct response to "what do you think of the custom scrollbars?" should be "wow, I didn't even notice a thing."

joegibbs 3y ago

If it was up to me I'd make adding options to the context menu something that you can't do without specifically choosing to in the control panel. Applications could supply context options to the OS but those shouldn't be displayed without the user going in and allowing each one specifically.

kalleboo 3y ago
Funny enough Microsoft has already had this battle with the Start menu https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030903-00/?p=42673 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030903-00/?p=42...
- NoPicklez 3y ago
  That's a great little blog post I forgot about what the torrent of links that would find themselves in the IE favourites page
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Funny enough the program what did found the way to add itself to the pinned list on the Task Bar is.. Google Chrome.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  What's actually sad is that Microsoft Edge and its new features are literally doing all of that right now.

nxobject 3y ago

As an aside, Enderman gets up to wild Windows shenanigans on his YouTube channel – things like getting Windows 11 to run on a P4, jailbreaking Windows S mode, etc. It's some fun light entertainment if you're into that sort of tinkering.

samtheDamned 3y ago
Wanted to say this too. They have a really good knowledge of ways to dig into Windows and I look forward to future blog posts

somat 3y ago

The first time I used the context button intentionally was when I got around to binding it as the compose key. As a bit of a tangent the X11 compose system is a really great way to enter less often used characters. Here is a bit of a tutorial, note this is probably openbsd specific. in ~/.xsession bind the context key xmodmap -e 'keysym Menu = Multi_key' in ~/.XCompose include the locale specific compose dir(in my case this is /usr/X11R6/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose) and set up some of your own include "%L" <Multi_key> <w> <e> <b> : "\xf0\x9f\x95\xb8" # spiderweb Now hit the menu key then w then e then b and you get a nice spider web

X-Cubed 3y ago

In regard to the limitations of the command line syntax, Raymond Chen discussed this recently: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240215-00/?p=109407 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240215-00/?p=10...

pjmlp 3y ago

When Microsoft refactored the context menu on Windows 11, I had high hopes that the new programming model would move away from writing context menu handlers in COM/C++, eventually using out-of-process handlers that could be implemented in .NET, any other compiled language. Nope, moving away from bare bones COM is too much to ask for WinDev, and already failed multiple times (.NET's original purpose, Longhorn, WinRT/UWP). A lost cause indeed.

arcastroe 3y ago

Is there any way to "show more options" by default on the windows 11 context menu? I often right click files to open with sublime, but that option is hidden behind "show more".