Context menu bloat

hethoofd · 23 Jan 2009

Are there more people that hate the Windows Explorer context menu bloat after you've installed a few programs like WinRAR and NOD32?

You can disable the program specific menu items most of the times, but the menu is huge anyway:

I removed the NOD32 items and I made the WinRAR items go into a submenu, so imagine how big that menu would have been with those items directly visible. Wait, let me post a picture of that:

It's HUGE!

I bet the menu could be a lot more compact

renthor · 23 Jan 2009

Yes, I tend to agree, the context-menu is a bit out of hand, especially like you say once you install a few 3rd party apps that make use of it. I'd almost like a way to have two context menus, access one with a short right-click, access the other with a long right-click. That might be too confusing for the average user, but I know I could deal with it. And more importantly, I'd really like to see a way to customize the menu, easily. (not regedit)

hethoofd · 23 Jan 2009

Yeah, two menus would be useful. Or, instead of the space taking seperators, they could use some different (light) colors to seperate things.

hethoofd · 23 Jan 2009

garbanzo · 23 Jan 2009

it's not that hard to control. both nod32 and winrar have options to remove and/or trim down the shell menu entries they add.

for other apps, and for windows itself, there are programs that help you turn things off. the best are ShellMenuView and ShellExView from NirSoft (just google it)

alternatively, a little registry magic will make your menus very tidy.

of course, i use Directory Opus which lets me customize the right-click menu of every filetype individually:

there are other apps out there for adding/moving/removing items from your context menus. have a search at lifehacker or ghacks and you'll find some nice freeware to help keep your menus under control...

hethoofd · 23 Jan 2009

That doesn't solve the menu bloat for mainstream users. I don't see them going through NOD32s and WinRARs options and through all those registry settings. The fact that such measures exist indicate that the menus are just too bloated.

renthor · 23 Jan 2009

Right, there are ways to do it, I'm not saying there aren't. I'd like to see it built in to Windows, however. Like something in the control panel or something similar.

hethoofd said:

hethoofd, I really like what you came up with there

hethoofd · 23 Jan 2009

renthor said:

Right, there are ways to do it, I'm not saying there aren't. I'd like to see it built in to Windows, however. Like something in the control panel or something similar.

hethoofd, I really like what you came up with there

The colors looked a little lighter in Photoshop

Feel free to improve if you can think of something :)

garbanzo · 23 Jan 2009

but seriously, it's only persnickety geeks like us that care about what our context menus look like. and we are capable of running apps or tweaking the registry to cut down the bloat.

chances are, the average user doesn't care one bit about what's in the menus. i bet most people don't even notice.

renthor · 23 Jan 2009

True, they probably don't notice, or even care if they do notice, but if Microsoft's all about trimming the UI and making Windows more usable, like they claim (and have largely accomplished with 7), then they should also work on cutting out extra bloat and extraneous functions. Not adding to it like they have with "Accelerators" ...

Take for example the browser's context menu. Do we really need Back, Forward, and Refresh there when they are A) easily accessible to begin with, B) most mice have back/forward buttons built in?

I'd prefer to see something like what I came up with real quickly below, where the left is the original context menu, and the right side represents what I'd like to achieve with a short right-click (the top half), and a long right-click (giving me the bottom half). Or even with mouse gestures. Right-click gets the top half, Right-click plus mouse movement (any direction?) gets the bottom half.