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Comment by kemayo | Hacker News Reader

The single most "oh, Microsoft" moment I had when updating to Windows 11 is actually glossed over in this article without comment. Context menus are restyled, and also now have a "show more options" entry[1] -- if you press it, what happens? The pre-Windows-11 context menu appears.

That's right. There's archeological layers of UI design in context menus now.

[1] https://ntdotdev.files.wordpress.com/2022/12/image-4.png

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I feel so angry about that new context menu. It's also visibly slower than the previous one (which, in turn, is slower than the Win XP version was). The second WTF was the centered start menu, killing my decade old reflex of going to the bottom left with the pointer and clicking. This at least has a toggle.

>The second WTF was the centered start menu, killing my decade old reflex of going to the bottom left with the pointer and clicking. This at least has a toggle.

Why do people even mention this? As you said, it has a toggle. How did it “kill your decade old reflex” when it literally takes 5 seconds to fix it?

Well, as the designers oft like to say: Defaults matter.

Does the default really matter in this case, though? It's not even like it takes a registry hack to move it back to the left. It's right there in the taskbar settings.

Multiply a quarter billion children having to fix it for a quarter billion grandparents, and that's a lot of wasted time and added frustration to the world for little to no reason.

You know what does take a registry hack though? Moving the taskbar to the left, or right[0]. As the screens have much more space horizontally than vertically, it would make sense, at least for some people, right? Well no, according to Microsoft.

[0] https://windowsreport.com/windows-11-move-taskbar/

My parents don't even know that taskbar has settings. And they shouldn't have to know it.

Because if it's not a default, and it has toggle, they will take it away eventually. Second thing is, many people leave it on default, so if I sit down at anyone's, they will have it in the center.

At the end of the day, I don't care about it the slightest. The reason I mention it is because it's a small thing in a long chain of abuse that Microsoft inflicts on the people via its product. A reminder that you're not the boss, things will change, and you'll suck it up, because you won't have alternatives. And I really hate this reminder. I actually stopped using it as my main driver ages ago, and they can still relight the hatred in me so easily with things like this.

That new context menu is garbage (for me). I use advanced functions regularly to the point that after a day of being on 11 it bothered me enough to figure out how to revert to showing the “advanced” (old) context menu.

How?? How can one achieve this power?

I did it so long ago, so I’m not quite sure it was this. A quick google gave me this: https://windowsreport.com/windows-11-right-click-show-all-op...

There are a few things out there, but I always trust a good ol’ registry hack over a 3rd party exe.

Thank you so much for this. I never even thought to look for a way to change it back, I thought I was stuck with this annoyance forever.

Going forward, when I hear the critique that Linux "has too many things to customize," I am going to point people at these comments. I am so glad that I got off this rollercoaster.

Completely agree with you and Linux is great for my home computer, but for some of us Windows at work is an unwavering reality.

I had it worse, Mac at work was an unwavering reality (Intune has since come to Ubuntu LTS which, while utter shite, is still better than MacOS). Apart from taking all direction from the marketing department, at least Windows is functionally competent. It could be worse - trust me.

Yea, there are many things in windows that you adjust (hack) in the registry, but there are many things that you cannot. There’s also no guarantee that when you make a mod like this that it will last forever. You’re at the whim of MS and any single update could be a reckoning.

One of the first things I do on a Win 11 install is to revert the context menus back to the way they used to be.

It's the single most annoying thing to me ... the rest of the changes I can live with.

It can be done with RegEdit and some minor changes to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\CLASSES\CLSID.

Information is online.

They also hide some of the most useful options while keeping the most useless. Rename is now one of the ones hidden by default.

The default list is created at the marketing department, not the usability lab.

Actually it does follow the faux usability trend where ”options confuse user”, and the perfect UI is just an uniform off-white screen with no controls

It actually isn’t, but I wouldn’t blame you for thinking it was. It’s now an icon of a text cursor and a tiny text box.

Huh, I'll admit that I hadn't even noticed that button-ribbon at the top of the context menu yet. :D

Better not get used to it, it will probably change by Windows 12

This is why buttons should always have text.

well, having the copy as path available by default is an improvement, but that context menu is still a step back

"rename" use to be F2, not sure if that's still the case nowadays

It's still F2, and due to this change I've actually learned to start using this more often.

That, among other things in Win11, was one of the last big pushes that got me to start using Linux full time. It's clear Windows isn't headed towards some bright future. Just more and more layers of shit on top of last gen. Like they can't actually finish anything. Just a katamari of code.

This is utter insanity.

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