In Explorer, you can right-click the icon in the caption

Date:October 8, 2003 / year-entry #89
Tags:tipssupport
Orig Link:https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031008-00/?p=42233
Comments:    15
Summary:In Explorer, you can right-click the icon in the caption to get the context menu for the folder you are viewing. (Very handy for "Search" or "Command Prompt Here".) Apparently not enough people realize this. In Windows 95, we tried to make it so most icons on the screen did something interesting when you right-clicked...
In Explorer, you can right-click the icon in the caption to get the context menu for the folder you are viewing. (Very handy for "Search" or "Command Prompt Here".) Apparently not enough people realize this. In Windows 95, we tried to make it so most icons on the screen did something interesting when you right-clicked them.

Comments (15)
  1. RJ says:
    October 8, 2003 at 11:08 am

    Hmm Just noticed in explorer (XP), if you right click on the title bar you get a context menu for which tool bars to turn off (that’s not it – I’m just warming up to my point). If however you right click on the icon in the address bar (or location bar, whatever) you have to right click twice to get the same context menu.

    Two questions.
    1. Why does it bring up that context menu when normally right clicking on a folder icon brings up the folder context menu?
    2. Why twice?

  2. Richard Tallent says:
    October 8, 2003 at 11:54 am

    Hmm… of course, if you have a shell window open viewing the Desktop, you don’t get any of the fancy choices you get when viewing a "normal" folder. Same goes with viewing the root directory of a drive. Are these customizable to add, say, a Command Prompt choice?

  3. Yeep says:
    October 8, 2003 at 1:35 pm

    Just as RJ says, when you click the icon of the folder in the address/location bar you get the toolbar context menu (after clicking twice), but not the context menu for that folder, which is what I would expect when reading Raymond’s article.

  4. Raymond Chen says:
    October 8, 2003 at 3:16 pm

    Yes, rightclicking the icon in the address bar is kind of dodgy. Sorry about that. It actually has been dodgy for a long time now, but nobody has really noticed.

  5. Graham Reeves says:
    October 8, 2003 at 3:25 pm

    After I first discovered this, I started to use the context menu on the folder to delete it. The delete option (and only the delete option) seems to have disapeared from windows 2000. (I believe it was still there in win98). Any interesting stories behind this removal? :)

  6. RJ says:
    October 8, 2003 at 3:29 pm

    "It actually has been dodgy for a long time now, but nobody has really noticed."

    Does MS have a bug-reporting system for customers? Although you’ve likely got all of the ones *most* of us are likely to find, you never know.

    I’d *love* to be a tester at Microsoft (as long as I could keep my mac :) ).

  7. Jordan Russell says:
    October 8, 2003 at 5:06 pm

    You can drag the icon in the caption, too. I have yet to find any use for that, however. :)

  8. Raymond Chen says:
    October 8, 2003 at 6:16 pm

    http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/suggestion.asp lets you submit feedback. We actually do read it. I received a rather nasty death threat via winwish once.

  9. Mike Dunn says:
    October 8, 2003 at 6:25 pm

    You can drag the caption icon in an IE window (to, say, the desktop) to create an internet shortcut. Or drag it into another IE window to open the same URL in that other window.
    You can even drag the Address bar icon to do the same thing.

  10. Sam says:
    October 9, 2003 at 4:21 am

    A death threat by winwish?
    who would do that? And why?

  11. dave c says:
    October 9, 2003 at 9:42 am

    what’s the easiest way to allow user to click on the context menu and open command prompt under the chosen directory.

  12. Dunc says:
    October 9, 2003 at 12:29 pm

    Dave C – here you go,

    Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTFoldershellcmdhere]
    @="Cmd &Here"

    [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTFoldershellcmdherecommand]
    @="cmd.exe /c start cmd.exe /k pushd "%L""

  13. Matthew Adams says:
    October 9, 2003 at 2:51 pm

    I use the ‘drag the icon in the address bar’ thing a lot; I tend to be dropping it onto a cmd window..

  14. jeff says:
    October 10, 2003 at 12:26 am

    dave c,
    There’s also the free powertoy download from microsoft that allows you to open the command prompt from the context menu.

    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

  15. dave c says:
    October 14, 2003 at 3:01 pm

    Thanks, i was able to get "Command Console here" to work in win2000 by changing the registry.

Comments are closed.


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