Classic Shell: Forum

I was wondering if it would be possible to reduce the orange color and make it somewhat like in original Windows 7? It looks much too colorful. Annoyingly colorful. It should only highlight items, not recolor them. The best option would be to let the user choose the color and transparency, but I'm not holding my breath.

ALSO I don't think new programs are supposed to stay highlighted forever. I may install some programs and get to use them after a month. I don't want them to hang highlighted all this time (i.e. until I access them). Under Windows XP, highlighting went away after some time, could you do the same? Not sure if this feature is implemented yet or not.

The color depends on the skin. Some skins are brighter than others.

The highlight is supposed to go away after 48 hours. If it doesn't, it is a bug and we can investigate.

Btw you can edit any skin in Resource Hacker to reduce or change the highlight color. The bitmap for highlighting is stored in some bitmap resource inside the skin file (it should be saved as a 32-bit BMP with transparency) and the values to be modified are Main_new_selection and Submenu_new_selection.

As Ivo said, the highlight will go away after the default period of 48 hours but there is a hidden setting to modify how long programs stay highlighted: HKCU\Software\IvoSoft\ClassicStartMenu\Settings DWORD value: OldProgramsAge . Value is expressed in decimals as the number of hours to highlight. The highlighting is in fact better implemented than the original menu. As soon as you use the program, the highlight will instantly go away (it didn't do so always in the original Microsoft Start menus). Or it will go away after the OldProramsAge period passes.

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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.

Done, thanks everyone for the help. Here's how it looks:

I would like it too if you can share the modified skin (I am lazy to do the resource hacking right now). Although I love the default highlighting more.

_________________
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.

Just backup your original skin first, because it will replace it (as in - in settings as well). I assume I needed to modify internal name within the skin to for it to be recognized as a different skin, and not "Windows Aero" - but I haven't done that yet.

REUPLOADED:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mgxas7

^ This should be adequate. I think I applied too much opacity to the first one.

Thanks. I attached it to this post so others can also download it if they want. Btw, if you need to modify it for the Windows 7 style of the menu instead of the classic style, you will need to edit the equivalent skin with the .skin7 extension. Also, the file name of the skin is how the skin appears in Skin settings, so you can just rename it so you don't need to overwrite the original (and so that when an update is installed, the installer doesn't overwrite your modified skin).

_________________
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.

I see, thanks a lot for explanation, I'll keep that in mind.