Classic Shell: Forum

Hello,

I posted on a similar topic over on the Custom Start Button section, but decided to rewrite it into more of a feature request topic.

A feature I would love to see implemented one day is the ability to change where and how start buttons are anchored or attached to the start bar, either through the Classic Shell UI, or through the data RGB pixel line one inserts above a given start button design.

By default, buttons appear to be anchored to the center of the start bar. Jcee pointed out in my previous post that this is actually the best place for it to be in most cases, particularly if one wants to move the start bar to the top or sides of the screen. However, it can also make designing some buttons tricky because when one increases button size, the button will expand from the center of the task bar in all directions, which can cause part of some button designs to become obscured by the edges of the screen. This can be accounted for to some extent by padding out the frames in a given design with empty space. However, the problem with this is if padding is applied to a button in order to make it display correctly on a start menu positioned at the bottom of the screen, then the design will not display correctly when it is used on differently positioned start menus.

In my mind at least, a good solution to this might be to have the ability to anchor a specific corner of a button to a specific corner of the screen, such that when its size is increased, it expands in the opposite direction of the anchor point. For example, if the menu was at the bottom of the screen, then if one had the button's bottom left corner anchored to the bottom left corner of the screen, increasing the button size would cause the button to expand upwards and rightwards, rather than in all four directions, which could lead to clipping. The benefit of this feature would be that a button could work on any menu configuration simply by electing to anchor the button to the appropriate corner of the screen, much like changing button size. This would also save people from having to add padding to button designs in order to get a button to display correctly.

Actually with the advent of complex/animated start buttons; I would have to agree that there should be an option 'Align to corner' That keeps the entire button on-screen. Because it is considerably more effort to adjust the offset on an animated button

IMHO, I think this will only complicate matters. The size setting and modifying the Start button bitmap are more than enough.

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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.

the results would be immediately visible, so I don't see it causing any confusion. Also the start button tab is empty enough it wouldn't be cluttered to add it. In-fact The ideal would be an X/Y offset for both the start button, and the start menus location. Its a pain to modify a start button, just to move everything up a few pixels especially if extra space around the button wasn't added initially.

Thanks for responding,



I think I disagree that size setting and modifying the bitmap are enough. They might be in some cases, but if your button does experience a lot of clipping, i.e., if it is significantly obscured by the edge of the screen, then you could reduce the button size, or add padding to the frames in the bitmap to push it away from a specific screen edge. Shrinking button size is not so much a solution as it is a comprimise in this case, as you are making the button smaller than you intended it to look. Further, adding padding to the bitmap to stop it clipping on one side of the screen will simply cause it to display incorrectly on start menus attached to different screen edges. Again, that seems like more of a comprimise to me than a solution. It just makes a whole variety of button shapes and sizes difficult to implement in my experience.

I'm not sure things would be overhwhelmingly complicated by the addition of a drop down menu box in CS that allows you to a) anchor button to centre of start bar, or b) anchor button the corner of screen (where the start bar currently is).

In Classic Shell 4.2.2, there is a new setting on the "Start Button" tab to align a custom start button to the corner instead of the middle of the taskbar.

_________________
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.