well, I was actually meaning to open a new dialog, which only contained a
listbox or a treeview, something which might simulate a context menu; might
not look visually too much like one, but might function to the keyboard user
much like a context menu.

you're idea of hidden controls not displayed until the right time might work
too if it's possible to make this listbox or treeview change location by
dynamically setting it's location somehow?  don't know if that's possible.

Did want to also point out you could taylor a standard menu each time the
focus or selection in a listbox changed so that it could be used *in place
of* using a context menu (by making some choices disabled, others hidden,
whatever).  it's just that the user would have to be taught to use this
standard menu rather than right clicking.  

I admit in a new application which I don't know too well, I often right
click something being displayed just to see what it is I can do at the
moment (I've seen the term "discoverability" used for this concept of making
it easy for the user to determine what can be done).  even so, I think the
standard menu would be an acceptable work-around until this feature can be
added.  I think the strongest argument for adding it isn't so much what it
can do, as it is that it's part of the standard paradigm that users expect
in an UI.

Chip
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jared Wright [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Saturday, April 16, 2011 9:26 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Right Click Context Menus

On 4/16/2011 12:33 PM, Chip Orange wrote:
"...possibly generating your UI XML dynamically so you could change the
location to what's appropriate for the current focus or mouse location?"
Can I add/edit elements to a dialog without reloading the whole thing? 
Seems I'd need to have all the possible controls already in the XML ready to
go, just hidden and disabled somehow until they're needed. Hmm. 
A good idea, although I confess I probably am not going to devote a ton of
time to working around this. I was hoping for something like a windows
message function someone knew of that would let me just display a menu right
on top of the dialog, but I knew that was a long shot.

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