Windows Contextual Menus Are Inconsistent
One of the many little things that annoys me about Windows is the inconsistency of where items are placed in contextual menus. Case in point: the menu that pops up when you right click on a taskbar item or window. I haven’t done a scientific study, but I’m going to guess that 80% of the time or more the last item in this particular contextual menu is the option to close the window that is being right clicked on. This is what the majority of the contextual menus look like:
Having it as the last item makes sense. It’s probably the most commonly used menu item and it’s an easy target when it’s the last item in the list. The problem is: because that item is listed as the last item over 80% of the time, I start to expect that it’s always going to be the last item in the list. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
For whatever reason, some applications list other options below the Close option. Here’s an example of the right click menu for a cmd.exe window:
When I want to close that window, I right click on the cmd.exe item in the taskbar and choose the last item that pops up. But it’s not going to close the window. Instead it’s going to bring up the properties dialog for the cmd.exe window. Now, not only do I need to close 2 windows instead of 1, I also need to always remember that cmd.exe breaks the convention and lists Close as the 4th item up from the bottom of the menu.
Here’s another example:
That’s the right click menu for SQL Server Enterprise Manager. It’s outdated now, but it used to be the main tool for dealing with SQL Server databases. Like cmd.exe, this application also lists an item below Close in the contextual menu. What’s even more annoying in this case is that the item listed below Close is Help Topics. It’s another option that I will accidentally click on instead of the option I wanted, but, this time, choosing the wrong item will start up another application. And, no matter what computer I’m working on, the help application always seems to take a painfully long amount of time to open up.
Now, I would be able to excuse all of this if it was just 3rd party developers who weren’t following the conventions set up by other Windows applications. The problem is: cmd.exe is a integral part of Windows and Enterprise Manager was Microsoft’s official application for SQL Server Databases. So it’s Microsoft that’s disregarding an informal convention and randomly placing items below the Close option. I can only hope that Microsoft plans on dealing with this problem with Windows 7.