Microsoft Windows question

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What is this GUI feature called? I don't know how to best describe it.

Do you remember Win 3.11 and clicking on the Edit menu, having it pull down, and then clicking on every sub-menu? Win95 brought in this ability of the mouse to hover over the sub-menu and it'd automatically select the sub-menu for you. This is the feature I'm talking about.

I realize it's been around for 25 years now, but... I've never warmed up to it. Is there a way to disable it? I feel like I have poor eye-hand coordination and keep "missing" the menu when I mouse right, and have to mouse left to pull up the sub-menu again. Feels like a time suck (yes I know, it's fractions of a second) but whatever--it's a computer, everything can be customized to the user, right? If nothing else, I'd like to know how to disable it and then try it for a bit, to see if I like that old method (or not).

Yes I know, I'm being antiquated--it's Friday, enjoy the laugh.
 
Originally Posted by hallstevenson
Keep moving your mouse

I do that *all freekin' day*. I do a lot of freehand CAD drawing work, like 4 and up to 8 hours a day, drawing lines and dragging things. When doing that, if my hand twitches, it's a minor thing to undo the twitch, only off by a mm on the screen. But menu selections "twitch" requires me to mouse back "a long ways". It's a small nuisance that occurs multiple times per day.

I could memorize the various menu key selections, or program hot keys, or even get one of those fancy mice with programmable buttons. But I worry that, if I ever get Parkinsons or the like, that I'll be apt to toss a computer out the window.
 
I do not know the answer to the problem, but the menu behavior is called a 'flyout menu'.

I've found in some programs (Firefox comes to mind) that I can click on the menu entry that led to the flyout sub-menu and that holds the sub-menu on the screen regardless of my accuracy at moving the cursor to it. This is on a recently-migrated Win10 desktop, so as always, YMMV.
 
Originally Posted by WondrousBread
This can be done, but it requires software that unlocks hidden options in Windows 10

As to why Microsoft doesn't just give us the option, who knows.

There have been tweakable options since Win95 where you either changed a "0" to a "1" on a certain flag in the registry (or add the flag yourself) or there were apps that would do various tweaks. For 99% of users, it would just confuse the UI to add options for all of that stuff, hence the 3rd-party apps. In the Win95-98 timeframe, Microsoft did offer their "Power Tools" that could do a lot of this type of stuff.
 
Originally Posted by WondrousBread
This can be done, but it requires software that unlocks hidden options in Windows 10

https://winaero.com/blog/disable-start-menu-auto-expand-on-mouse-over-in-windows-10/

As to why Microsoft doesn't just give us the option, who knows.

Because MS wants a standardized user experience where people can jump from one PC to another and already know how it works, and the less they allow people to change, the less likely they'll break something.
 
Originally Posted by Dave9
Because MS wants a standardized user experience where people can jump from one PC to another and already know how it works, and the less they allow people to change, the less likely they'll break something.

I get that, and tend to run software as-is out of the box, largely because I'll know that I'll forget how to make changes years later when I switch machines: but after 25 years, I still hate this menu setup. Well, "hate" might be too strong, but I sure have not warmed up to this change.

I also miss the Unix feature where if you mouse over a window, it's now active. I like that I don't have to click on the window to scroll, at least, that is a step forward. But. Excel doesn't support this! If I am switching between any other program and Excel, I have to always click in order to scroll or even just to be active in that window.

Huge first world problems, I know.
 
Ah, if I click on the menu, it does seem to fix it, at least until I go back to the left. Perhaps that is good enough, it really is only the fact that if I don't go precisely to the right that causes the menu to go away, and that is what bugs me.

I'll try this for a bit and see if it makes me happy.
 
Originally Posted by supton
I get that, and tend to run software as-is out of the box, largely because I'll know that I'll forget how to make changes years later when I switch machines: but after 25 years, I still hate this menu setup. Well, "hate" might be too strong, but I sure have not warmed up to this change.


Not me, after installation I immediately try to make it look and act more like Win2k. I tolerate the colored themes just to make it look less than 20 years old, lol. Obviously some things can't be changed when moving to a newer OS version, but it goes beyond just learning a new GUI, many things in newer Windows versions are more cumbersome to do in an attempt to make it dumbed down and sleek looking, so it looks tidy with less text... because empty space is apparently the cool thing to do now, so you're left clicking this and that to find where something is hidden then have to memorize that sequence to get there. It may be deliberate, that they don't really want you to get anything done, just be using windows while you don't.
 
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