I really don't like the new context menu.
But today I made some break through. Conclusion is that:

Only the menu owned by Windows shell has the new style, including desktop, file explorer and open dialog boxes in all applications, self-build shell menus (remember shell provides APIs to allow you to populate your own menu) like this is not affected.
Most ugly menus are owner-drawn by a window which has a class name of "SHELLDLL_DefView", there is one exception, the folder tree in file explorer is called "SysTreeView32" and its parent is called "NamespaceTreeControl".
The code used to draw the ugly menu should be identical to how most program draw owner-drawn menu. Message WM_MEASUREITEM and WM_DRAWITEM are observed.
The browse folder dialog still has the system menu style.

Looks like Microsoft adds the owner-drawn menu flag after querying all menu items, disable owner-drawn while adding menu item has been proved impossible.

To change the menu style, we need our code to present in all processes which have the "SHELLDLL_DefView" and "NamespaceTreeControl". Global hook is not a very good choice since it is very inefficient. Making a shell extension looks good, because shell extensions will be loaded by all "SHELLDLL_DefView" and "NamespaceTreeControl" when needed.

Then we need to find a good type of shell extension to implement. Here are some very naive idea:

When our extension is being loaded, it scans for "SHELLDLL_DefView" and "NamespaceTreeControl"
Replaces WndProc of "SHELLDLL_DefView" and "NamespaceTreeControl" to our own
In our WndProc we handle the WM_INITMENUPOPUP message, this message is sent to the window just before the menu is displayed.
Traverse the entire menu and remove the MF_OWNERDRAW flag for all menu items

This should work, but problems are:

Which type of shell extension should be implemented
How can we locate the correct "SHELLDLL_DefView" and "NamespaceTreeControl" window

Seems like this cannot be done with this program (this program only injects code to the taskbar process), I will start another repo for the explorer context menu patch. I will let your guys know when it is ready. But for now, stay on this thread and post your thoughts here!

PS: I don't hate new menu styles but I really hate inconsistency.

Context menu (Desktop + File Explorer) #2

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