Why can't you resize the Windows Environment Variable box?

Question

Recently having to set my PATH environment variable installing the JDK, I found it quite annoying that the box where you set environment variables was not re-sizable, and had was generally quite horrible to edit.

Aside from MS just not making this more UI-friendly, I was wondering if this was built as such for a reason, or if we are hanging onto some legacy code that is affecting this.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Maybe you'd like this nifty tool I've been using for a while, ResizeEnable. It allows you to resize windows that are normally not resizable:

Answer 2

I don't get it at all. It's completely unnecessarily painful.

Use Windows Path Editor instead. It'll make life a lot easier and less error prone (I realise this doesn't answer your question per se, but is offered as general advice!)

Answer 3

Anything that is considered a dialog by Windows isn't resizable. And that includes, unfortunatelly, the aforementioned as well.

Answer 4

While it indeed may have been built to make power user heads expode everywhere, I find the setx command to be a frequently viable way around it, e.g.:

setx HOME "%USERPROFILE%"