ender`

I'd say this is waaaay out of StartIsBack's context.

Since skins are now supported, is there any chance that the text colour could be fixed when using a high-contrast colour scheme?

Buy a codesigning certificate (you can get it for free for open-source projects from Certum, but otherwise they cost between $50 and $500 for the first year). Check around at different CAs - I bought mine from GlobalSign because I needed a certificate that works for kernel drivers (they need Microsoft's cross-signing certificate, and usually cost more). I think Startcom is the cheapest (but doesn't allow for kernel-mode codesigning), and you also get unlimited number of https certificates.

Task Scheduler is already running on all systems (unless you disabled it manually, but then that's your problem), and it's what eg. Adobe Flash and Chrome use to check for updates. SmartScreen in IE9 and newer will automatically flag unknown programs as dangerous (a program is unknown if it' wasn't downloaded a certain number of times; for programs that aren't digitally signed each unique version needs to get this many downloads before it's not flagged as unsafe anymore, while for digitally signed programs every download signed with the same certificate counts).

Use a scheduled task?

I wonder why didn't they simply rename it to WinRT UI. Oh, and I edited my Start button images a bit:

Does it? I thought they changed that to Windows 8 UI or something like that

Right-click the installer, Properties, Compatibility, Run this program in Compatibility mode for: Windows 7

I made my own Start button image, which IMHO fits better to the Windows 8 flat look: Use as you wish.

Don't believe me - looks like it's gone with 1.1rc1.

Thanks for the offer, but there's a slight problem: if high contrast mode isn't enabled, many programs mix their colours with system colours, which usually results in invisible text (some actually still do that with high contrast enabled, but they're rarer).This is the actual theme I use. NOTE: Link is a direct download to a theme file.

I'm using high contrast theme with dark background and bright text because I find it's much easier on my eyes than any theme with white backgrounds (my theme is actually customized, but I switched to one of the default themes shipped with Windows just to verify that the problem happens with them, too).I also noticed another problem: I can't pin a shortcut to a text file to Start (even with 1.1rc). Had to change it to run the program, passing the filename as a parameter.

I have a small problem with StartIsBack: the text seems to be set to some very dark grey colour, which makes it nearly invisible in high contrast colour scheme: Additionally, all submenus have white background and no visible selection indicator. Is this something that can be fixed? I tried changing the Start menu translucency, but it doesn't have any effect. I also noticed that with taskbar set to auto-hide, it won't unhide if I move my mouse to the lower left corner until I click - but this is not really important.

Is there some way to enable desktop composition with the Windows Standard colour scheme? I don't like the appearance of Aero Glass (which my card is more than capable of using), but I find that without it there's much more flicker and redrawing in general seems to be slower than with XP. I tried enabling Aero Glass and then stopping the Themes service, and this seemed to work for a while (mostly - Window borders were still Aero themed, but I'm willing to live with that), but then suddenly Windows just disabled desktop composition.

Don't count on it - I've seen several WHQL-certified drivers that were pure crap and caused crashing (IIRC, one of the Linksys network cards, it's been a while), or that didn't work properly (the whole 9x.xx series of nVidia graphic card drivers - connect to the computer with RDP, then log on back locally and try playing any video or anything that uses DirectX).

Is it possible to set the shortcuts/folders displayed in My Places bar in Office applications (specifically, Office XP and 2003) through Group Policy? I know where to set them for standard dialog boxes, but Office applications use custom settings. I have looked through the ADM files provided by Microsoft, but couldn't find these settings, and searching with Google only gives me pages which tell me how to edit the registry on local computer.

You can open most newer ADM files in NT4 poledit by first opening them in Notepad, and then saving them with ANSI encoding. You can also find NT4-compatible ADM files for XP if you google around a bit (hint: many of them are on samba-related sites, since Samba 3 emulates a NT4 domain controler).