Classic Shell: Forum

Hi there,

I've been looking around the internet for a start menu application for my Windows 8 OS.

I've used Classic Shell before and I love the program but on my search I found a few interesting features that Classic Shell could maybe incorporate.

- Grouping Programs

Organizing programs into different groups on the start menu. Groups by criteria such as: Games, Utilities, Programming, Video, Music, System, Internet.
Perhaps even making the groups collapsible would be a great idea.

- Single Click Open

Opening programs in folders by a single click. As in click on the Microsoft Word folder and it opens the main application by linking the executable to the folder.

- Power Options

Simple options for power buttons like: Force Shutdown, timer shutdown, remote shutdown.

@grouping icons; well you could put the links in a folder, but yea it might be cool if you could have collapsable groups

@single click open; you can assign sub-items to an executable, so double clicking will run it, and single click will open a sub menu with whatever else you add

@ power options, Im pretty sure you can already
shutdown timer: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=281
and the other 2 should not be to hard to figure out, although alot of these commands should be included out of the box, without having to search..

Interesting ideas, we've thought similarly about grouping and reducing folder complexity but there are certain considerations.

Grouping if implemented must be done so in a manner such that it doesn't break shortcuts for uninstallers. When a program is uninstalled, its shortcuts must get cleanly removed. Windows Installer shortcuts (advertised shortcuts) should not even be renamed or its self-repair functionality kicks in. If the shortcuts are moved and put inside folders named by category, then they break for uninstallers.

For folders which include links to multiple EXEs, e.g. Microsoft Office, there isn't a definite way to determine that Word is the "main application". It can be Excel or PowerPoint, it can wrongly pick any EXE. But we get your idea.

Power options: You can already do it yourself. In fact, Classic Shell's Start Menu is one of the few which can do it. Go to Customize Start Menu tab in Start Menu settings, add a Custom Command from the right column by dragging it to the left column. Double click in the left column to edit its command, label, tooltip and icon. Including all commands out-of-the-box is a challenge because the Start Menu terms must be localized using MUI technology into all supported languages. But you can define them yourself and save the configuration to an XML.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

@it could wrongly pick any exe;
not if the user pre-determined which one opens when that folder is clicked, but this is kinda like just adding a custom item for the executable and then adding sub items

@grouping could break uninstallers;
yea it would have to be done entirely in the start menu, rather than moving/changing shortcuts; also i don't think all programs have metadata to determine exactly what group they fall into.., so the user would have to pick a category themselfs..

@Start Menu terms must be localized using MUI technology into all supported languages
I always seem to forget the complexities of multi-lingual support , but howabout a way to add to the available commands list manually, via editing some file in the install directory, so advanced users could create a 'commands pack' that would work without having to add them manually, or install over your current setup?

I have seen all these features the OP requested in Start Menu X.

_________________
Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and did Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.

It is impossible to get back system colours is windows 8 but classicstart has system colours and msgina.dll style functionality with the boxed shutdown.
Many users are pissed at not having aero or classic mode in win8 but maybe classicshell can include a theme-manager that overrides the settings of the broken windows 8 themes along with bringing back tabbing icons instead of this horrible horrible big miniature tabbing .

The question is how?
1. Using current code to make it into a fully customizable explorer replacement as an alternate download where people can make it look exactly win95 / 98 / 2000 / XP etc styles would be ideal since classicstart already covers so many things . it would faciliate removing memory hogging services and make it games a faster experience . Iconed tabbed browsing can be done unfortunately the only way to do it is to disable dwm.exe in windows 8 which renders explorer.exe useless but classic tabbing still shows up from time to time . An alternative to Explorer.exe would make us disable useless services as dcomlaunch and dcom along with dwm.exe and we could tailor our system to work the way we want it instead of the way Microsoft want us to use it which would also remove non wanted tap screen to open usb drive messages etc .


2. While i agree that workarounds are possible it could be a cleaner and faster way to replace explorer completely and facilitate portability for the upcoming versions of windows where we risk to even lose the desktop copy paste and multitasking features. Knowing how microsoft thinks it would come as no surprise if they remove even more features and add useless junk in their place. The making of an alternative explorer would partially be a trial and error process for making it load in place of explorer.exe .


3. The benefit would be the customization and ease of modding could improve and we could for example use a classic theme with glass transparency style where the white in the windows is supposed to be at change icons with ease by having all system icons in only 1 dll (microsoft keeps old as new icons in one big mess in their dlls classicstartmenu as an explorer.exe could load fewer icons from a custom dll ) add back the NT style login box etc . More modding more fun ...


4 I hope the community listens to this and i would like to thank Ivo for giving us the classic startmenu back.


I hate to see the project abandoned just because microsoft messed things up too much thats why i am for a replacement

Making a full replacement for Explorer is a monumental task that I do not wish to undertake. Luckily, there are already few such products. Do a search for "explorer replacement" and you will find a couple.

I fully understand that Ivo but i was actually calling to the programming developer skilled folks in this forum , The idea is to start a side project that goes hand in hand with Classicshell , code for classicshell and an explorer based on it can only get better .

the idea here is to take the finished bits and pieces of code to startmenu and shell tweaks and combine them with some code from an early reactos explorer before they bloated it up with ActiveX iebased junk .

Api-programming is a bitch and the way microsoft went to move shell32.dll icons and bitmaps scattered into imageres.dll shell32.dll among with other shdocvw.dll networkexplorer.dll explorerframe.dll and so on
my idea is to have the shell team to get a wiki done on all those files and make a more clean explorer that can be customized powered by classicshell which i believe could also benefit in the classicshell development and future versions of windows that have desktop windows removed and replaced by an evil searchbox but we will be forced to upgrade because of the games and hardware support .


So my question here lies : Can we have a developing thread about doing this project in a community effort?