Aero Taskforce

joem wrote on June 3, 2008, 4:10pm

YES, YES, YES. Drives me crazzy

wasker wrote on June 3, 2008, 4:32pm

Thanks for bringing this issue!

murdocdv wrote on June 3, 2008, 6:36pm

I totally forgot about this one, but I think the Impact needs to be higher. No more accidental launches of Help!

ryanlm wrote on June 3, 2008, 10:18pm

Couldn't agree more!!! UltraMon does this... Now if windows could manage taskbar spanning I would need UltraMon !

alewifebp wrote on June 4, 2008, 12:48am

Yes, totally agree! How many times have I opened help from the MMC? Lots. Although the command prompt is MUCH worse.

nwoolls wrote on June 4, 2008, 1:35pm

I HATE HATE HATE this.

dmetcalf wrote on June 4, 2008, 2:40pm

Foxit PDF Reader has something like 'send to tray' below the close option. I am ALWAYS sending PDFs to the tray when I want to close them.

jonk wrote on June 5, 2008, 4:46am

@alewifebp i've done MMC help a bazillion times...

BrandonLive wrote on June 5, 2008, 5:08am

Is this even the system menu? It sounds like somebody might be replacing the system menu with their own. In which case, the system can't do anything about. It's a menu shown by the Application. It doesn't even need to *have* a "close" button if it doesn't want to.

Are there applications in Windows itself that exhibit this behavior? Assuming there are, I think a list of those would be valuable.

Rouge wrote on June 5, 2008, 9:28pm

CanoScan (Canon's scanner software) has this, too. VERY annoying!

eried wrote on June 8, 2008, 12:04am

Yeah! This is very annoying!

thenonhacker wrote on June 8, 2008, 12:35am

+1 +1 +1 so needs a fix!

bandycj wrote on June 8, 2008, 5:31am

Man, this should totally be changed to a high severity. Microsoft's own MMC and everything derived from it are the worst offenders.

Shemmie wrote on June 8, 2008, 8:04am

Defo - MMC drives me crazy.

longzheng wrote on June 8, 2008, 1:19pm

Assigned to categories: "Usability"

mVPstar wrote on June 8, 2008, 2:41pm

I actually hate it when there are too many context menu items.

But yeah, this is a big issue.

RedSign wrote on June 8, 2008, 6:03pm

That's another reason why I love to close entries in the taskbar with the middle mouse button. I love Taskbar Shufle.

Jaco wrote on June 9, 2008, 3:50am

Command Prompt does that and it is damn annoying when you want to quickly close it.

Slugsie wrote on June 9, 2008, 8:23am

Is it really that hard to *read* what your about to click? I have never, ever, done this. In fact I rarely use that system menu as it's easier to either press the red X, or hit Alt-F4.

keff wrote on June 11, 2008, 1:03pm

OK, so WHERE you put the additional items?
To the top? people will complain.
To the middle? doesn't make sense.
Delete them? Software vendors would go creasy, some useful apps wouldn't work, backwards compatibility would be broken.

CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES BEFORE POSTING, DESIGN IS SOMETIMES ABOUT DOING THE LEAST WRONG THING.

keff wrote on June 11, 2008, 1:04pm

PS: you can disable unwanted shell extensions with http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html

alsotop wrote on June 11, 2008, 1:31pm

Always annoys me with the command prompt, I always end up pressing "Properties" instead of Close.

oadrian wrote on June 11, 2008, 3:22pm

In this particular case I wish I could vote hundreds of times because this one infuriates me. Extra options should be placed just before the close (to answer Keff).

This one gets me every time especially with certain software applications, but better yet, why isn't this menu sacred instead? It really should just be the options related to window management and then they could have a very standard order.

Kiliman wrote on June 11, 2008, 4:48pm

UltraMon lets you specify where to place its commands. Open UltraMon Options, select "Buttons and Menu Commands", then choose Position of the custom menu commands "above Close"

Hope this helps.

Max Schmeling wrote on June 12, 2008, 1:48pm

Changed impact from [Low] to [Medium].

AussieALF wrote on June 13, 2008, 11:14pm

Keff: it is simple place it above the close button in a seperate group, therefore it is still "on its own" but at least the close button remains in the same spot. I like many others HATE mmc for this.

rayb wrote on June 19, 2008, 6:01pm

I too think that this issue has to be one of the most annoying of all. There's no logical reason why you can't swap the Close item with the additional items below, leaving the dividing lines. A can't tell you how many times this has caused me to launch something unintended rather than close a window.

Edootjuh wrote on June 20, 2008, 6:40am

This won't work. It's in the Aero Guidelines and if programmers decide not to follow them, that's too bad.

XeviouS wrote on June 20, 2008, 6:57am

WOW...I am so happy that others find this annoying also as I thought I was the only one.

Microsoft: Have as many other options as you want.....but CLOSE should be the default for the first item!

keff wrote on June 23, 2008, 5:24pm

AussieALF & others: Just imagine the order as you suggested:

Restore
Move
Size
Minimize
Maximize
Something completely unrelated
Close

I bet $5 that it would be posted on UX Taskforce the moment it would appear in Windows 7.

Max Schmeling wrote on June 24, 2008, 6:33pm

So put the added items at the top of the menu. Problem solved.

Or, alternatively, don't allow items to be added. I have never in my life used any non standard item in that context menu. However, I'm sure some people do, so this probably isn't an option at all.

alewifebp wrote on June 26, 2008, 5:43pm

It is a very standardized window, so it should be standard in all windows with no customization allowed. It's all about consistency. It's kind of like when 3rd party app vendors (Apple, I'm looking at you) reverse the OK and Cancel buttons. Design conventions are there for a reason, and the Help or Properties has nothing to do with the window management tasks that this menu displays.

keff I agree with you that this would be on a Windows 7 UX Taskforce if they changed it around. So make it standard.

Ensign Joe wrote on July 6, 2008, 2:37pm

But who in the hell does need Help Topics in the SYSTEM menu?! You have the "Help" menu...
The only reasonable use for adding buttons to the bottom of this menu would be a checkbox "Always on top" in Media Player applications for example. Not more...

jiifurusu wrote on August 3, 2008, 6:18pm

As much as this sounds like a good idea It just isn't possible.
The system menu is available for editing by applications through the standard API, and Microsoft can't change that without breaking thousands of third party applications. And the end users will blame Microsoft for their favourite application suddenly not working properly.

This isn't fixable without replacing the entire Windows API.

Max Schmeling wrote on August 10, 2008, 8:18pm

jiifurusu: Maybe you're right. I don't know the API for editing this menu. But I would think they could force it to move the Exit item to the bottom no matter what. That way everyone's applications still work fine, but they just get their items above the Exit item.

.Chris wrote on August 21, 2008, 10:34pm

Just get rid of this section

BrandonLive wrote on October 29, 2008, 9:42pm

This is fixed in Windows 7 as far as the taskbar is concerned (the new Jump List menu, which shows up on right-click, always has "Close Window" at the bottom).

litemininyuszika wrote on January 9, 2009, 3:17pm

No, it's not fixed in Windows 7! (i'm using beta 1 - build 7000) :(

1. Open Command Prompt.
2. Keep the mouse on it's taskbar icon until live preview shows.
3. Right-click on live preview.
4. You can see, it looks like:

Restore
Move
Size
Minimize
Maximize
Close
Edit >
Defaults
Properties