Santa, please no more customized system menus...
When I'm finished with a task, I close all programs and windows that were ivolved in that task. I usually do it by right-clicking the task bar icon of every window that should be closed, move my mouse one pixel up-right to select the Close item on the system menu (opened as a context menu when right-clicking the task bar) and click it to close.
It's a very effective and convenient way to very quickly close a series of windows.
... unless a program decided to customize its own system menu and add custom items at the end of the menu. Because in the rush, by the time I realize the last item is not Close, I already clicked it. Boom!
Stop! What did I do ? Oh I opened a dialog. Let's dismiss it. Let's now CLOSE this program and go on...
It's really only a detail, but a very frustrating one taking into account the hundreds or thousands of times I ran into it.
The MMC console is probably the most common of such BAD programs :
If only these customizations were helpful at all ! But tell me: who the f*** would want to go to the system menu to customize the view (isn't the View menu obvious enough ?) or, even better, to get help ?
Let's not even speak of the About system menu item added by VS's dialog-based app MFC app-wizard.
So, please Santa, no more apps with customized system menus...
3 Comments:
These really annoy me too. I wish it wasn't possible to change it.
I realised after a while that the app wizard had extended my apps system menu. Annoying - thankfully I've removed it now.
Over on Jensen Harris's Office 12 blog I hear that those Office "customized/learning/automatic" menus are going to be removed forever. Thats good news.
Regarding mmc.exe, I gave a quick look into its resources and found menu 162, which seems to contain the items that are added to the system menu. I changed the item IDs to 0. And it kind of worked: These items are no longer added to the system menu. It's only half a of a victory though since mmc still adds a menu separator after Exit, which shifts up the Exit item.
HTML Help is another big offender.
Post a Comment
<< Home