Get The Classic Start Menu - WIndows 8 DP

[MagicAndre1981]

About the last part of my post you said you didn't understand, I'll try to make it clear now. I am talking about this:

Here is a tool which port the feature to Vista/7:

http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.13

The monitor I'm using is only 19 inches in size with the default resolution of 1280x1024. When I play a game I have it run in fullscreen. When I watch a film, I enjoy it in fullscreen too. If I open Word or Excel, they are also in fullscreen. And when I am suffing the net, the browser is always open in maximize, not window. See?

for me it is the opoosite. I have large screens with higher resolutions (1920*1080 and 1920*1200) and fullscreens sucks. I only use fullscreen if I play a game (happens 1 times in a month) or watching a movie. All other times I never use fullscreen. And Metro on such large monitors only wastes space. I only have content in the middle and the is empty sapce on the left and right side. This is UNACCEPTABLE for me.

[xpclient]

Well Classic Shell is the best we have got at the moment. Hope Microsoft realizes that users don't want desktop Windows to be re-imagined and recovers for Windows 9.

Edited May 15, 2012 by xpclient

[JorgeA]

I think it is one of Microsoft's finest designs.

UltimateSilence,

Here's my exact reaction when I clicked on your illustration of a Vista-inspired web page:

"Oh, wow -- that's gorgeous! Look at those buttons. They have DEPTH..."

Thanks for sharing.

--JorgeA

[Aloha]

Here is a tool which port the feature to Vista/7:

http://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.13

Thanks for posting. Will give it a try on W7, but not sure when! Maybe when I can't use W8 any more!

[xpclient]

The just released 3.5.1 version by Ivo Beltchev has an option to boot to desktop (slapping Metro on the way).

[Guest]

I can't find the setting for that.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

xpclient,

Question: when you click the Start Button in Classic Shell, what message does it send to Ballmer and Sinofsky who are so busy watching the telemetry data from the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program?

It be great if the telemetry was configurable, perhaps a custom message. Just sayin'.

[CoffeeFiend]

what message does it send to Ballmer and Sinofsky who are so busy watching the telemetry data from the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program?

Everybody who has any common sense or knows how to use a computer turns that spyware off. Perhaps that's the very reason why they ended up creating Win8 too: they based everything on telemetry results from complete n00bs.

[JorgeA]

what message does it send to Ballmer and Sinofsky who are so busy watching the telemetry data from the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program?

Everybody who has any common sense or knows how to use a computer turns that off. Perhaps that's the very reason why they ended up creating Win8 too: they based everything on telemetry results from complete n00bs.

Yeah, I always turn that off. I don't care for Microsoft (or anybody else, for that matter) keeping track of what I do on my computer.

OTOH, declining to participate in the CEIP may be (part of) the reason that we ended up with the Metro screen and no Start Button/Menu.

--JorgeA

Edited June 30, 2012 by JorgeA

[xpclient]

I can't find the setting for that.

For a clean install, it should be enabled by default. If you are viewing only Basic settings, scroll down on the Basic settings tab and look for the option called "Skip Metro screen". If you prefer viewing all settings, it appears as the first option on the "General Behavior" tab.

[xpclient]

xpclient,

Question: when you click the Start Button in Classic Shell, what message does it send to Ballmer and Sinofsky who are so busy watching the telemetry data from the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program?

It be great if the telemetry was configurable, perhaps a custom message. Just sayin'.

The Classic Shell Start button is independent of the Windows Start button so no telemetry will be gathered about that. Maybe a lot of people were using Classic Shell on Windows 7 as well (we started it in 2009 after all after the lack of the real Classic Start Menu). So that explains why few people used Microsoft's Start Menu. No just kidding. I'm sure MS is lying because millions did use the Start menu. Let's all hope they remove Metro in Windows 9 because no one used it.

Edited July 1, 2012 by xpclient

[JorgeA]

The just released 3.5.1 version by Ivo Beltchev has an option to boot to desktop (slapping Metro on the way).

xpclient,

Very glad to hear this!

You're probably one of the best people in the world to ask this of: In Windows 8, using ClassicShell is it possible to re-create a Start Menu in Vista/Win7 style, with no fly-out All Programs listings?

--JorgeA

[xpclient]

Nope unfortunately that's not possible because by fundamental design, it is first and foremost a classic flyout style menu which Ivo and I believe is a better approach because it utilizes all of your screen when using multiple columns. Classic Shell in fact started as a classic menu because Windows 7 removed it and then "evolved" to become the XP style dual column menu+a little filter box like Vista/7. I know the usability of menus which expand and close by hovering the mouse pointer has been criticized by many usability experts for being inefficient. Classic Shell addresses this with a simple solution. If you find it difficult to navigate flyout sub-menus expanding horizontally because of the menu closing as soon as the mouse pointer crosses its boundary, you can set the "Menu Delay" setting on the 'General behavior' tab to a higher value. This causes the sub-menu to not close immediately but after a while. If you set it to a very high value, the sub-menu will expand and close only by a mouse click, not by hovering.

What the non-flyout style introduces is a scroll bar and that is something to be avoided if all the programs can fit on the screen. Still, if you prefer a scrolling menu, you can have that as well with Classic Shell but just not the in-place expanding one. But even if you use a single column layout in the Classic Start Menu, you can use the mouse scroll wheel to scroll up and down the menu. The menu also supports scrolling with the mouse wheel if you place the pointer to the right of the single column so that the folders do not expand unnecessarily as you scroll. Or like I said, set the "Menu delay" setting to a very high value.

Edited July 3, 2012 by xpclient

[JorgeA]

xpclient,

Thanks for explaining.

I can go either way with the menu -- the classic and the Vista menu are both WAY better than the Metro Start Screen. It's just that there are cases where having a smaller menu display works better for me. For example, sometimes I'm trying to follow complicated onscreen instructions (say, from a Microsoft troubleshooting page) and it helps to be able to read the next step without the menu covering it all up (as the Metro Start Screen does).

--JorgeA

[xpclient]

Yes that I can understand how it's better in some cases. As a compromise, Classic Start Menu can be compacted very much by checking "Small icons" in Skin options, using a single column main menu skin, changing the column style of sub-menus to single column, removing the caption as well. And the width of the both main and sub-menus can be reduced too. That way, it will overlap very little with what you are doing on the screen.

I can't think of ideas to reduce the height vertically if you have many programs installed.