On many context menus you will see an item in boldface. For example, if you right-click a text file, you will most likely see "Open" in boldface at the top of the mean. What does the boldface mean? The boldface menu item is the default command for that menu. It represents the action that would have occurred if you had double-clicked the item inst...

One of the subtleties of context menus is showing help in the status bar. Now, the program we've been developing doesn't have a status bar, so we'll fake it by putting the help text in the title bar. The key method for this task is IContextMenu::GetCommandString, which allows communication with a context menu handler about the verbs in the men...

One bug that was called out immediately in our first attempt at displaying the context menu to the user is that the Open With and Send To submenus don't work. The reason for this is that these submenus are delay-generated (which explains why they don't contain anything interesting when you expand them) and owner-drawn (which you can't notice ye...

Some people from my knitting group have been among those assisting in the preparation of today's episode of the knitting show Knitty Gritty on The Do It Yourself Network. Stop reading if you don't want the television illusion shattered, or at least cracked a bit. Each volunteer was assigned a section of a sweater to knit. The show's host will...

Another of the bugs you may have noticed in our first attempt at displaying the context menu to the user is that the Delete command doesn't alter its behavior depending on whether you hold the shift key. Recall that holding the shift key changes the behavior of the Delete command, causing it to delete a file immediately instead of moving it to ...

Everyone has read the story about penguins falling over backwards while observing low-flying aircraft. The Annals of Improbable Research reports that Dr. Richard Stone has been researching the ecological effects of helicopter overflights on King penguins and his preliminary results show that King penguins do not, in fact, fall over backwards (...

One of the bugs you may have noticed in our first attempt at displaying the context menu to the user is that the Properties dialog doesn't show up at the point you clicked. The Properties dialog isn't psychic; it doesn't know where the original mouse click occurred. You have to tell it. CMINVOKECOMMANDINFOEX info = { 0 }; ...

If your subject matter is a suggestion for a future topic, please post it to the Suggestion Box (using the Suggestion Box link on the side of the page). If you send it to me directly, I will probably lose track of it. If your subject matter is personal (for example "Hi, Raymond, remember me? We went to the same high school..."), you can send...

Instead of invoking a fixed verb, we'll ask the user to choose from the context menu and invoke the result. Make these changes to the OnContextMenu function: #define SCRATCH_QCM_FIRST 1 #define SCRATCH_QCM_LAST 0x7FFF #undef HANDLE_WM_CONTEXTMENU #define HANDLE_WM_CONTEXTMENU(hwnd, wParam, lParam, fn) \ ((fn)((hwnd), (HWND)(wParam), GET...

As part of the continuing campaign to shed their hard-working stereotype, perhaps taking a cue from their more well-adjusted Norwegian neighbors, Swedes have been taking dubious sick leave in record numbers. [A] study showed 40 percent believe it is enough to feel tired to stay home and draw benefits. A survey of 1,002 Swedes by the board a...