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How to add any Ribbon command to the right click menu in Windows 8

In Windows 8, Microsoft has introduced the Ribbon in Windows Explorer so that the numerous Explorer commands can be more prominently displayed when you need them. But the Ribbon commands are still split across many tabs unnecessarily making you go through all of the tabs to find the command you need to use. There is the Quick Access Toolbar at the top where you can add custom commands but the problem is that it has only tiny 16 x 16 sized icons and no textual description. You need to hover over each of the tiny icons to see their description. Also, Desktop has no Ribbon, and most of the useful commands are inaccessible via right click.

In contrast, the right-click/context menu is a better option as it has icons as well as textual description, excellent keyboard usability and you don't need to remember which Ribbon tab a particular command is located on. Also, the Ribbon takes a huge amount of vertical space, so once you added the command to the context menu, you can keep the Ribbon minimized or disable it entirely with our Ribbon Disabler. ;)

Today I am going to share with you a cool trick which will let you add any Ribbon commands of your choice directly to the right click (context) menu of files and folders. Let us see how.

The full list of shell commands in Windows 8

Earlier, we have covered the most comprehensive list of shell locations by their Class ID which you can use to create a shortcut to the specific shell location for quick access. Today I am going to share the list of shell commands using their friendly name. Although these are implemented by the same ActiveX objects, you will notice that not every shell location with a CLSID has a user friendly alias. For example, 'Devices and Printers', the one with the shell:::{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A} CLSID has no friendly-name equivalent.

In the general case, a shell command looks like this:

shell:Friendly Folder Name

For example,

  • shell:SendTo - the folder with items that you see in the "Send to" menu
  • shell:Desktop - the Desktop folder, and so on.

Read the the full list below of such commands in Windows 8.

How to enable fast XP-like Event Viewer in Windows 8

NT6, whose era started with Windows Vista, has introduced a new Event Viewer with blackjack and hookers filters and categories. Although they are quite useful and allow you to locate any system event/error easily, the Event Viewer is VERY slow. Those of us who have used Windows XP/2000 still remember how fast and compact the Event Viewer was in Windows XP. It can still be useful if you only quickly want to see the last few events which happened on your system. Windows Vista, 7 and Windows 8 still contain the old Event Viewer application, but it is just not enabled by default. Today I am going to share with you how to enable it.

Windows Registry Editor for dummies

Often, our tips mention the Windows Registry and Registry Editor. What exactly is the Registry and what is RegEdit? Those are who are familiar with Windows for many years need no explanation, but those who are new to Windows will find this post useful.

Today, I am going to explain the fundamentals of Registry Editor. I will also cover command line arguments, essential methods of working with this program and more. Read below if you are interested.

New details about Windows 9 have leaked

Indicative Roadmap for Windows 9, the next update after Blue.

Windows 9 Beta (7 January 2014)
Windows 9 Release Candidate (July 2014)
Build 2014: Windows 9 RTM (October 2014)
November 2014: Windows Release 9

Testers have got build 9319.0.130208-1820 from Winmain / FBL_EEAP branch

Internet Explorer 10 RTM is released, offline installers are available

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows 2008 R2 Service Pack 1. As you may know, it is already bundled with Windows 8 and now available for previous versions of Windows after a couple of months.

IE10 for Windows 7
So, here is the list of what's new:

The most comprehensive list of shell locations in Windows 8

There are lots of shell locations in Windows, that you can access via shell:::{GUID} commands from the "Run" dialog. They are also known as "Shell Folders". With each version of Windows, many new shell locations are added.

What are Shell Folders

Shell folders are ActiveX objects that implement a special virtual folder or a virtual applet. In some cases, they provide access to physical folders on your hard drive or even to special OS functionality like "Minimize all Windows" or the Alt+Tab switcher.

What you can do with Shell Folders

You can use them in various scenarios, but in the general case you can use them to create a shortcut to a specific Control Panel applet or a Windows feature.  For example, the following command will open the "Network Connections" folder:

shell:::{7007ACC7-3202-11D1-AAD2-00805FC1270E}

Network Connections

Note: Press Win+R keys on your keyboard, copy the command above and paste it in the "Run" dialog.

The following command will open Control panel always in "Category" view:

shell:::{26EE0668-A00A-44D7-9371-BEB064C98683}

And the following command will open Control Panel in icon-view, either small or large, that was set by the user the last time he opened it.

shell:::{5399E694-6CE5-4D6C-8FCE-1D8870FDCBA0}

There are lots of interesting things there. You may already know the famous so called God Mode/All Tasks shell location. Another interesting one that I have found is the "Command Folder" that represents Explorer ribbon/toolbar commands:

shell:::{437ff9c0-a07f-4fa0-af80-84b6c6440a16}

The result looks as follows:

CommandFolder

Today I would like to share with you the most comprehensive list of shell locations I have discovered in Windows 8.

Internet Explorer 11 will be shipped with Windows 8.1 (aka ‘Blue’)

According to Win8China, Internet Explorer 11 is currently in development and will be included in the next major update to Windows named "Windows 8.1" (aka 'Blue') that is expected to be released this summer.

IE11

How to open a new window of a desktop app from the Start screen

In Windows 8, whenever you launch a second instance (new window) of an already running desktop app, the Start screen does not launch a new instance of that app. It merely switches to the already running desktop app's window. This can be highly annoying.

To open another window of the same program, you have to either Shift+click on the Desktop app's tile or right click and choose "Open new window". The behavior in earlier Windows versions which had the Start Menu was different. The Start menu always always launched a new instance of an app.

Luckily, there exists a way to allow us to control this behavior. Let's see how.

How to properly restart the Explorer shell in Windows

Windows provides several secret ways to exit the Explorer shell. They can be useful when you make registry changes that affect Explorer or for shell developers when testing shell extensions. In case you didn't know them, today I am going to share them with you.

Why you may want to restart Explorer

There are several reasons when you may want to exit the Explorer shell and start it again, such as:

  1. You are trying to uninstall some software with shell extensions, e.g. WinRAR. If you leave Explorer, all shell extensions will be unloaded from the shell and will be cleanly deleted by the uninstaller. All files that are locked for use by the Explorer.exe process will be released.
  2. If you applied some tweak which requires you to log off and log in back, in most cases, it is enough to only restart the shell.

Let's see how this can be done.

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