> But it is a new coat of paint over the ones from 10 or before
It's not, which is the point. They're trying to get people off the old way of extending the shell. If they just wanted to reskin the right click menu to look "modern" they could have done that.
https://blogs.windows.com/blog/2021/07/19/extending-the-cont...
Right, that’s the strange part. I originally thought that the split was caused by the old shell APIs requiring honest-to-goodness HMENUs with all that implies, but File Pilot[1] does have reskin the old menu with some success so evidently that’s not completely impossible.
[1] https://filepilot.tech/