from Hacker News

The Windows Context Menu – Is It a Lost Cause?

by ChiptuneIsCool on 2/20/24, 10:41 PM with 33 comments

by joegibbs on 2/20/24, 11:48 PM
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.
by nxobject on 2/21/24, 12:14 AM
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.
by somat on 2/21/24, 12:48 AM
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
by DustinBrett on 2/20/24, 11:22 PM
NirSoft's ShellExView & ShellMenuView are good tools for tweaking that menu.
by X-Cubed on 2/21/24, 2:37 AM
In regard to the limitations of the command line syntax, Raymond Chen discussed this recently: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20240215-00/?p=10...
by pjmlp on 2/21/24, 1:56 PM
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.
by arcastroe on 2/23/24, 4:50 AM
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".
by celadin on 2/24/24, 5:54 PM
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.
by dang on 2/20/24, 11:36 PM
[stub for offtopicness]
by ryukoposting on 2/20/24, 11:35 PM
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.