Classic Shell: Forum

Hello, I have an idea for the classic shell start menu. This would be to place any image you'd like on the start menu, and have it link to any program or file . For example a picture of a meadow, and have it link to your photos with a caption on it that says "photos". You could place these images anywhere on the start menu, and as far away from each other as you'd like. This would be like the windows 10 live tiles feature except without using the live tiles api.

Here's a picture:

I found a quote on the classic shell forums: "Showing live tiles is currently not possible, as windows 8/8.1 does not provide an api for 3rd parties to use them. It may be possible in windows 10, but that remains to be seen."

But with this idea, it'd be possible to have tiles, just not tiles that update every so often like the real windows 10 tiles.

Perhaps an image that updates could be possible with a custom news and weather program for windows that points to where it would recieve news stories captions & their pictures or a live url where the picture changes. But I'm not sure on that.

This would need two features to be implemented into classic shell:
1) The ability to add images to the start menu as objects, and to have the same ( or similar ) settings as an item such as 'programs' would have under 'edit item' in the customize start menu section.
2) Multiple columns to support the added images. Multiple columns would be useful for adding things other than images as well.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for reading =)

Support, now my computer will look like windows 10 (sort of)

Cool idea, could be interesting/useful

Hello, I'm wondering if this is now possible to make a start menu like my concept image above from the new features that were added?

Recently added to classic shell:

- Taskbar texture - .bmp, .png, .jpg
- New skinning features for pattern textures, emblem textures, and mpre complex skin settings
- Skins can use png and jpeg resources
- Skins support logos/emblems drawn on menu background, up to 10 emblems
- Fresh skin options which support colors, bitmaps, and more

Currently, icons for start menu items still are .ico but with the recent changes, maybe it can support .bmp, .jpg, and .png as well?

I was thinking about maybe emblems could have a link box around them? Or perhaps a separate link box that you could make the same size as the tiles.

Thanks! =)
- Red.

This is as close as your going to get (well you can add a second column to the left or right.
The tiles arent live or resizable, and they are hard-coded (IE a pain to change/move)

Hi, how did you do that? Are those all .ico's? How come they're all the same size? Do you know if it's possible to do this with emblems too? I didn't need live tiles ( although if you could make a .gif or .png that was animated that'd be nice to have as a tile. ) Different sizes would be nice too. Thanks for your reply, it's much appreciated =)

Its not emblems, its .icons, and can only be achieved on the classic/classic with 2 columns menu.. heres a screenshot of relevant settings

Ok, cool. Ill keep that in mind. I was hoping that it wasn't .ico's though as there are some drawbacks to using them. Thanks, maybe one day images can be added to the start menu. I was asking about emblems before because I thought that maybe they could make the start menu look like I wanted.

I made a topic asking how to add emblems to the start menu just to see what they did here:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6544

The drawbacks to .ico's :

1) You're unable to have different sizes of .icos on the start menu. It's possible to have smaller pictures in larger .ico's, but they can't be overlayed to fill in the gaps.

2) They can't be animated.

Thanks again =)

Update:

Using emblems I was able to create a Windows 10 looking start menu on Windows 8!

You can see a picture here:
http://oi67.tinypic.com/2uqenub.jpg

What I did was add enough items in the start menu to make it big enough to fit all the emblem tiles, and also under 'customize start menu' if you write & & & it gives you extra column space to work with.

I've attatched the start menu I made here.

Congratulations; you added an un-clickable picture to the menu
Sadly there isnt yet a feature to give links to emblems. (though that would be extremely useful for advanced start menu customization)

Btw if you play around with the skins padding (look for: Main2_padding=3,10,5,9 in your skin); you don't need to add & & & & & to an item to get the spacing right (also dividers will work properly)

XD you're right. I did say a 'windows 10 looking' start menu though, so not exactly a real one yet.
I'll look into the padding, thanks. ^^

If links to emblems were added, that'd be pretty cool. I currently have 5 emblems, showing 13 different tiles, while classic shell supports up to 10 emblems.

If links were added, then it'd be possible to make links to websites, or programs. Say a Nintendo logo emblem goes to Nintendo.com, or the nintendo forums, or it goes to your Nintendo gameboy emulator on your computer.

To make links for all of the 13 tile emblems, you'd either have to allow multiple hit areas for emblems, so 1 - 3 links with a specified hit area of width and height for the links.

Links could also be separate, and overlay anything on the start menu, and go to a website, or program. Maybe even commands too? Like a custom shutdown and log off button side by side.

The other option is allowing more emblems on the start menu that could be linked too.

Thanks for your reply, it's much appreciated. =)