ANN: Classic Shell 0.9.8 -now with skinnable start menu

Wow - that is really very nice!
I wish I knew how to program like that.
Thanks.

To Ivo, still been using the additional explorer buttons and so far the program is quite stable with no crashes, even with Actual Window Manager installed. One quick request, can you add a refresh button to the toolbar in the next release please?

Thanks!

You are the second person to ask for a "Refresh" button. But there is one already in Explorer. It is at the right end of the address bar, just like in Internet Explorer. A toolbar button will not be more convenient.

Edit: I haven't had the need to press Refresh ever (on Vista). Explorer refreshes itself every time there is any change to the file system. I tried even changes accross the network on a Win2000 machine, and it still catches them. Can you give a specific scenario when Explorer doesn't auto-refresh for you?

I see the refresh button now. I have never used Vista/7 explorer like XP (and before) file manager so to this day I am still in the habit of using the toolbar buttons.
On somewhat rare occasions when I copy lots of files or large file sizes or folders, empty icons or folders are left in the folder and disappear upon refreshing. That is the only case I can think of.

I am also trying to think of other useful buttons to add..........how about undo? select all/invert selection?
CopyTo, MoveTo?
Thanks.

Undo is problematic because it is tricky to get right. If you notice, the Undo command in the Edit menu gets disabled when there's nothing to undo, and also changes text depending on the action that can be undone. Not all operations are undoable, and without this text you may think you are undoing one thing, but it is in fact something else.
All that is internal information for Explorer and there is no known way of getting it.

Select all/invert is probably possible, but I don't see a suitable icon for such buttons in shell32.dll. What would the icons look like anyway?

CopyTo/MoveTo - I hate how those work. They are very cumbersome and for the past 15 years of using Windows I can't remember a single time I've used them. Drag/drop or copy/paste are so much easier. And of course there's the problem with the missing icons.

Ivo

I know next to nothing about programming so I didn't realize incorporating and "undo" buttton would be so difficult.

I occasionally use copy to/move to functions and apparently some people do otherwise that tweak to add it back to the explorer right click menu wouldn't be so widespread and popular. But you are right, drag/drop and copy paste is more direct. I however use select all quite frequently. I downloaded a context menu shell extension from crashcoursesoftware which includes icons but they are dated to Win95 era.

You might try looking for icons at QuizoApps: QTTabBar in the plugins section. The first plugin adds adds explorer copy, cut, paste, etc. functionality to the toolbar. QTTabBar was a nice program but never updated and the author has apparently abandoned this project. I am hoping your Classic Shell program will eventually replace QTTabBar.

Thanks!

brilliant brilliant brilliant
thankyou for restoring sanity

> > warning - there now follows a bit of a usability rant < <

I can live with the W7 start bar after a while spent bashing it into submission (my Vista machine has XP settings applied anyway)
..but the Explorer 'missing features' is totally unacceptable behaviour from Microsoft

up button
control click to open a new window
its essential for those of us who use it fifty times a day
-sure, add the breadcrumb as an extra but dont *remove* functionality
(next if I could get rid of the Burn button and get the two tool bars in one line it would be heaven)

and I am heartily sick of the "it's great, now accept it and move on"

Ivo, you must be a design and function purist (so I thought you must be British...!)
many thanks

(now all I have to do is get Outlook Express back (oh, I can't, that's right) or get used to Thunderbird -Windows live mail is garbage if you have many email accounts but want them integrated to one set of organised folders)

Msoft are forever forgetting the people who use their PCs for work every day
They think its a fun machine for playing games and making home movies..

oh yes I also hate the stupid outline box that's added when you click a desktop icon in W7.. and even Firefox have copied that so the history icon gets a border when I click it - well, you know, I can see the history bar I dont need the icon to change

and file times to the second in list view please MSoft (or just give us an option to swtich it on - look there's many different types of user Microsoft - give us tweaks where we can do what we want)

these arent requests to you Ivo - just pointers to the dumbness of Microsoft

rant over? I doubt it..

cretaceous said:

now all I have to do is get Outlook Express back …- Windows live mail is garbage

But you can use "Windows Mail" - known from Vista. It's in folder "C:\Programs\Windows Mail\". But it is a little bit difficult to reanimate this in Windows 7.

Search the Internet for:
enable "Windows Mail" "Windows 7"

Part of classic shell is not working properly for me anymore. It's the stausbar part of it. Sometimes it works, then it stops working. I've tried the repair option from the installer but get a error about not being able to access a tmp file in my user folder. Any Ideas? Do I need to get the latest version? I'm using the version prior to your last update. I'm not interested in the start menu stuff, just the toolbar, statusbar and copy.