How to trigger the "old" right click menu on the start screen Windows 8.1 Update 1

[Jose_49]

If you've been tampering or playing a bit with Windows 8.1 Update 1, then you've seen  that the right click menu is much more mouse oriented. 

 

Anyways, If you've liked the "old" way, or the "original" way of right clicking and selecting the start menu items, it's as simple as this:

 

 

 

 

Go to the start screen. As soon as you're there, press the space key. There you have it!

 

If not, then press the tab key, and verify that the items are highlighted with white. Press space!

 

Enjoy ;)

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Awesome find mate... Appreciated...

[Steven P. Administrators]

Hah nice find!

[Ian W]

If you've been tampering or playing a bit with Windows 8.1 Update 1, then you've seen  that the right click menu is much more mouse oriented. 

 

Anyways, If you've liked the "old" way, or the "original" way of right clicking and selecting the start menu items, it's as simple as this:

 

 

 

 

Go to the start screen. As soon as you're there, press the space key. There you have it!

 

If not, then press the tab key, and verify that the items are highlighted with white. Press space!

 

Enjoy ;)

I wish that the previous method was the default and that an option to use the new, mouse-oriented context menu was added in Taskbar & Navigation.

The decision to not provide an option in the UI reminds me of Windows 7, where one has to hold on to the Shift key and right click on the taskbar in order to bring up the classic context menu. Why should most users have to compromise?

Anyway, thank you for posting this, Jose_49. This method is undoubtedly better than nothing, but it's still a little depressing that one is forced to resort to it in the first place . . .

[contextfree]

It's not old vs. new, it's just touch/keyboard vs. mouse. The complaint people had with the app bar before was that it required too much mouse movement, hence the context menu for mouse. Since that complaint doesn't apply to keyboard use, the keyboard still gets the app bar (space has always been the keyboard way of selecting items/showing commands), just as touch still does.

[Mannlich]

Nice find - one of my only complaints about Update 1 was that selecting items on the start screen was difficult with keyboard and mouse.

[rorrr]

triggering the tile menu with the space bar has always been possible in Windows 8.

[Forjo]

This change was a mistake. Right-clicking tiles is fine, but right-clicking the background should throw you into customize mode. That it offers the option to "Name Groups" is lame. Customize already has the groups with edit boxes. Name Groups is a feature that I use heavily, but many users don't. And certainly, wouldn't use it much after groups have already been created.

 

Being forced to hold down CTRL to select multiple tiles is a definite step backward.

 

And why is there an option to disable the power icon and not the search icon?  I use WIN-Q or the charms. I don't need that icon.

 

-Forjo

[Anibal P]

This is what happens when for some bizarre reason MS has decided to hamper things catering to a small subset of complainers, the "old" way worked, people need to get over it, we're not getting win XP back no matter how much you complain, we are getting a worse OS because of these people 

[+Elі Subscriber²]

Nice find, thanks for sharing, I too prefer the "modern" way as opposed to what we got in the latest update, but oh well.

[ViperAFK]

This change was a mistake. Right-clicking tiles is fine, but right-clicking the background should throw you into customize mode. That it offers the option to "Name Groups" is lame. Customize already has the groups with edit boxes. Name Groups is a feature that I use heavily, but many users don't. And certainly, wouldn't use it much after groups have already been created.

 

Being forced to hold down CTRL to select multiple tiles is a definite step backward.

 

And why is there an option to disable the power icon and not the search icon?  I use WIN-Q or the charms. I don't need that icon.

 

-Forjo

ctrl to select multiple items is the same way you'd do so anywhere else in windows, its normal and expected behavior.

 

And what does one gain by disabling the power/search buttons on the start screen? If you look at that area the space isn't being used for anything else anyway, you'd gain nothing.

 

People are really determined to nitpick every single change in this update, and are really grasping at straws.

This is what happens when for some bizarre reason MS has decided to hamper things catering to a small subset of complainers, the "old" way worked, people need to get over it, we're not getting win XP back no matter how much you complain, we are getting a worse OS because of these people 

:rolleyes:

[Forjo]

ctrl to select multiple items is the same way you'd do so anywhere else in windows, its normal and expected behavior.

 

And what does one gain by disabling the power/search buttons on the start screen? If you look at that area the space isn't being used for anything else anyway, you'd gain nothing.

 

People are really determined to nitpick every single change in this update, and are really grasping at straws.

:rolleyes:

It's easier to just right-click once then click each item you want. On your precious desktop you can enable item checkboxes for the same functionality. But that ease of multi-selection has been removed from the start screen.

 

Just because you think it's so, doesn't mean that functionality has not in fact been removed.

 

And what is gained by removing the icons? The removal of redundancy. I don't need them. I won't use them. And I prefer the cleaner look with only my name and picture at the upper right.

 

It's funny. The Metro haters have been complaining ad nauseum for options to disable this and bypass that. But let some of us ask to keep some of the new methodologies and we are "nit picking "every single change"" and "grasping at straws".

[ViperAFK]

It's easier to just right-click once then click each item you want. On your precious desktop you can enable item checkboxes for the same functionality. But that ease of multi-selection has been removed from the start screen.

 

Just because you think it's so, doesn't mean that functionality has not in fact been removed.

 

And what is gained by removing the icons? The removal of redundancy. I don't need them. I won't use them. And I prefer the cleaner look with only my name and picture at the upper right.

 

It's funny. The Metro haters have been complaining ad nauseum for options to disable this and bypass that. But let some of us ask to keep some of the new methodologies and we are "nit picking "every single change"" and "grasping at straws".

 

 

 

I don't identify myself as a 'metro hater'. I updated to win 8.0 when it first came out and had no issues using it, I consider myself more at a middle ground. I like some of the decisions and improvements in win8, and don't mind the fullscreen start menu at all, but really dislike forced fullscreen for modern applications on the desktop,  feel that windows 8/metro should adapt to whichever platform it is being run in, including the desktop, and that's what these updates working towards. Some of metros functions, like the right click menu that was on the bottom of the screen,  while great for touch, resulted in a lot of unnecessary mouse travel, I much prefer the new (or old rather) right click menu that they added in this update, and I'm sure many other desktop users will as well. While I wasn't one of the people crying for these updates, I certainly don't mind them ;)

 

While I would agree with you that the search icon on the start screen isn't needed, I disagree about the power button, it should not take so many clicks to reboot the machine, and the other location for the power is buried under 'settings' in the charms menu, which I've always found quite silly. I've seen a lot of users that simply couldn't find reboot in windows 8 because of this, adding a power button to the start screen was a sensible and obvious choice, and as I said before, the space where those icons were added was an area with a ton of unused space, it doesn't significantly clutter the start screen in anyway, and one doesn't really gain much by removing them.

[Forjo]

I don't identify myself as a 'metro hater'. I updated to win 8.0 when it first came out and had no issues using it, I consider myself more at a middle ground. I like some of the decisions and improvements in win8, and don't mind the fullscreen start menu at all, but really dislike forced fullscreen for modern applications on the desktop,  feel that windows 8/metro should adapt to whichever platform it is being run in, including the desktop, and that's what these updates working towards. Some of metros functions, like the right click menu that was on the bottom of the screen,  while great for touch, resulted in a lot of unnecessary mouse travel, I much prefer the new (or old rather) right click menu that they added in this update, and I'm sure many other desktop users will as well. While I wasn't one of the people crying for these updates, I certainly don't mind them ;)

 

While I would agree with you that the search icon on the start screen isn't needed, I disagree about the power button, it should not take so many clicks to reboot the machine, and the other location for the power is buried under 'settings' in the charms menu, which I've always found quite silly. I've seen a lot of users that simply couldn't find reboot in windows 8 because of this, adding a power button to the start screen was a sensible and obvious choice, and as I said before, the space where those icons were added was an area with a ton of unused space, it doesn't significantly clutter the start screen in anyway, and one doesn't really gain much by removing them.

 

It's arguable that the power button is actually more useful than the search one -- you make that case well. The fact is that it can be disabled (and I have), yet search cannot. Probably an oversight, but still bears mentioning.

 

And sorry, but right clicking a tile is exactly the same amount of MOUSE movement as it was in 8.1. Only now you have to do additional things to get into customize mode. What is worse about the new way is now it requires two hands to multi-select where before you could just use the mouse.

[ViperAFK]

It's arguable that the power button is actually more useful than the search one -- you make that case well. The fact is that it can be disabled (and I have), yet search cannot. Probably an oversight, but still bears mentioning.

 

And sorry, but right clicking a tile is exactly the same amount of MOUSE movement as it was in 8.1. Only now you have to do additional things to get into customize mode. What is worse about the new way is now it requires two hands to multi-select where before you could just use the mouse.

Adding a customize link to the 'new' right click menu would be all thats needed to solve the customize mode issue, that does seem like an oversight, but its not a problem intrinsic with a classic style right click menu, they just omitted the customize link for some reason.

[Forjo]

Adding a customize link to the 'new' right click menu would be all thats needed to solve the customize mode issue, that does seem like an oversight, but its not a problem intrinsic with a classic style right click menu, they just omitted the customize link for some reason.

That would satisfy me.  It would be one extra click than before, but tons better than what we have now.

 

The best option, I think, would just be to trigger customize when right-clicking the background. The option to name groups could be exposed when right-clicking tiles.

 

And considering that the groups go editable in the customize menu, it's rather superfluous.

 

Not to mention that a right-click menu with only one option is bad interface design. If there is only one option, just enact it. Why make the user click again?

 

-Forjo