I haven’t switched to Windows 11 due to the many other complaints I’ve heard, but based on various statements in that post I can imagine good reasons for changing the context menu:
# Saving menu navigation time
Having a long menu that contains every option is not free: it requires more time and effort from the user when they locate and click on the common items they use. Depending on how often the prioritized items are clicked and how big the penalty is for, the tradeoff could be worth it.
I don’t have the data on how much menu navigation time a smaller menu saves in the long term, but since Microsoft forces telemetry on users, hopefully they did at least collect such data while they evaluated the new design.
# Encouraging API upgrades
This change also encourages app developers to upgrade their context menu extensions to the latest API by “punishing” them if they don’t, by making their context menu items slower to access. While it’s understandable that developers of such apps would feel annoyed at this increased pressure to upgrade, such a policy might be an effective way to helping end users by solving the last two Windows 10 context menu problems listed by the blog post. That is, this increased pressure to use a newer API might:
• increase the numbers of apps the user uses whose commands are attributable to that app
• increase the number of apps the user uses whose extensions of the context menu have a lower risk of performance and reliability issues
However, I do see the potential for this backfiring if developers of Windows apps think that Windows is requiring too much upkeep for maintaining their software on Windows to be worth it.
For that specific change, the Windows Developer Blog post “Extending the Context Menu and Share Dialog in Windows 11” (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/07/19/extend...) hints at the designers’ reasons.
I haven’t switched to Windows 11 due to the many other complaints I’ve heard, but based on various statements in that post I can imagine good reasons for changing the context menu:
# Saving menu navigation time
Having a long menu that contains every option is not free: it requires more time and effort from the user when they locate and click on the common items they use. Depending on how often the prioritized items are clicked and how big the penalty is for, the tradeoff could be worth it.
I don’t have the data on how much menu navigation time a smaller menu saves in the long term, but since Microsoft forces telemetry on users, hopefully they did at least collect such data while they evaluated the new design.
# Encouraging API upgrades
This change also encourages app developers to upgrade their context menu extensions to the latest API by “punishing” them if they don’t, by making their context menu items slower to access. While it’s understandable that developers of such apps would feel annoyed at this increased pressure to upgrade, such a policy might be an effective way to helping end users by solving the last two Windows 10 context menu problems listed by the blog post. That is, this increased pressure to use a newer API might:
• increase the numbers of apps the user uses whose commands are attributable to that app
• increase the number of apps the user uses whose extensions of the context menu have a lower risk of performance and reliability issues
However, I do see the potential for this backfiring if developers of Windows apps think that Windows is requiring too much upkeep for maintaining their software on Windows to be worth it.