Common menus in Microsoft Windows

This is a list of commonly used Microsoft Windows menus.

Microsoft menus

Most Recently Used menu

Most Recently Used (MRU) is a term used in computing to refer to the list of programs or documents that were last accessed. It is a feature of convenience allowing users to quickly see and access the last few used files and documents, but could also be considered bad in terms of privacy.

Properties menu

In Microsoft Windows, a properties page is a panel of information in the file properties dialogue (accessed from the File menu, context menu, or by typing alt-Enter, or alt-double-clicking.) It can be a built-in feature of Windows Explorer (for example, the file sharing page), or created by a shell extension (for example MP3ext or WinRAR))

System menu

The system menu (also called the window menu or control menu) is a popup menu in Microsoft Windows, accessible by left-clicking on the upper-left icon of most windows, or by pressing the Alt and Space keys. This menu provides the user with the ability to perform some common tasks on the window, some in atypical ways. For example, normally a user would move a window by dragging the title bar of the window - but with the option in the system menu the user gets a different cursor and procedure to move the window with.

Some applications customize the system menu, typically through the GetSystemMenu WinAPI function.^[1] Cmd.exe is an example of this and offers the user an ability to change its preferences through its system menu (other applications typically offer the user to change their preferences through the normal menu below their window's title bar).

References

1. ^ "GetSystemMenu API documentation on MSDN". http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winui/winui/windowsuserinterface/resources/menus/menureference/menufunctions/getsystemmenu.asp. Retrieved 2006-05-24.