The terrible menu bar in the Windows 11 Notepad
In a recent article, the author complains about the menu bar in the modern version of Notepad in Windows 11. The menu bar exhibits several regressions compared to the older Win32 version. One issue is that users cannot hold down the primary mouse button on a top-level menu item, move the mouse to another item in the opened menu, and then release the button to select and dismiss it.
Another issue is that keyboard navigation using left and right arrow keys does not function correctly. When pressing left, the cursor gets stuck on items with submenus, and right arrow key navigation also gets stuck in submenus. Additionally, the F10 keyboard shortcut, which is supposed to focus menu bars, does not work in Notepad.
Access keys, which should be displayed consistently with older Win32 menus, disappear when using the arrow keys for navigation. The menu bar items also respond to right-clicks, causing unexpected behavior like enabling disabled items. These issues are not specific to Notepad, as the MenuBar component in the WinUI 3 Gallery exhibits similar problems.
The author notes that this problem has been reported since 2019 but remains unresolved. The third issue mentioned is that the MenuBar component has not been updated since 2016, despite the release of WinUI 3 in 2020.
Written by urgent.news from Lobsters's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
