ANN: Classic Shell 0.9.8 -now with skinnable start menu

Hi, everybody.

After 2 weeks of coding I finally have skinning support for the classic start menu. Use one of the 5 default skins or make your own (to match that shiny Windows theme of yours). You can change images, fonts and colors as you like. See the attached screenshot.

Get it while it's hot: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

If you want to create your own skin, first read the tutorial: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/skintutorial.html

Disclaimer: I am NOT an artist. The current skins are the best I can do . I'm sure there are many talanted people on this forum that can do far better .

P.S. If you are not familiar with Classic Shell - it is a shell extension for Windows 7 and Vista that has a classic start menu, a toolbar for Explorer, and other features.

I think of the many start menu options out there, this is the best--easy to work with.

I have some questions though:
1) Are there any plans to have the sub-menu or the menu support glass backgrounds (and not opaque)?
2) Any plans to have an option for no caption? but with the aero glass? I tried to get rid of the caption but I think it defaults to having one.
3) It's been mentioned before, but are you working on having the Search bar functionality? I've seen it on the "Classic Start Menu" program, but I don't like the lack of customizability of that app.

1) Having glass background is a significant amount of work. Currently I am reusing a lot of code from Windows itself, but it hasn't changed much since Win95 and is incompatible with glass. I have to reimplement most of that code to have a menu on top of glass. It is on the wishlist, but for the long term.
2) This is doable. I am planning to have an additional pack of skins, and that can be one of them. I don't know when I will have time to do that though. If you are up to it, you can make one yourself.
3) The whole point of the classic start menu is that it doesn't have search. The search box steals all keyboard input. You can't access programs and sub-menus by their first letter any more. My theory is that before you open the start menu you should know if you want to search or if you know where the program is. If you want to search - Shift+click to open the searchable menu. Otherwise just click to open the classic menu.

Wow, quick feedback, thanks =)

Ahh, your rationale for #3 makes sense. Personally I've never used the first letter to navigate the classic menu. I've also found the search option is useful for running programs as administrator--giving you a chance to right-click.

As for a caption-less skin, I didn't know that was possible. Tinkering with it, I realize all you need to do is just change the second number of the main_bitmap_slices to 0 and presto, no caption. Thanks!

Also, I was wondering if it would be possible to "make new folder" directly in the start menu by right clicking (versus doing it in Explorer)?

Oh, and I love how this only takes 2.5MB of memory, so small, lean and powerful!

Setting the second number to 0 is not enough. At the very least you should add 1 to the first number. Otherwise there will be one pixel lost at the end.

But the full solution is:
Main_bitmap_slices_X=0,0,0,15,1,13
Caption_padding=0,0,0,0
Main_padding=12,10,10,8

And if you want small icons:
Main_large_icons=0

I was just thinking earlier today about "New Folder". It is already on the todo list. It is not hard to do by itself, the tricky part is finding translations of the phrase "New Folder" in all languages.

Yeah I actually just added the extra pixel to the third number. So instead of:
Main_bitmap_slices_X=7,0,1,6,1,13

I changed it to:
Main_bitmap_slices_X=7,1,0,6,1,13

Fantastic Program!!!

This is a wonderful and well made program. Thank you very much!!

One question: Win XP used to have a File and Folder Tasks menu which allowed for emailing a file with a single click. This seems to have disappeared in Win 7. Is there any way of making an icon for the Windows Explorer Toolbar that would allow one to email a file with a single click?

Thanks for all of your efforts.

I think Win7 doesn't have the Tasks pane any more. I haven't used it on XP, so I don't really miss it. Maybe you can start another thread asking if it can be turned on.

Otherwise, you can right-click on a file, go to Send To -> Mail recipient. I haven't used that either, but I suspect it will do what you ask.

Thanks very much for the quick reply.
It does work to right click, click on send to, and click on mail recipient, but that requires 3 clicks, and there doesn't even seem to be a keyboard shortcut.
Since mailing a file is a common function for many people, it would be a really useful button to have (perhaps next to the delete and properties buttons which you made).
Thanks again for all of your efforts.

I did some prototyping and the results are promising. Most likely this will make it in the next version, probably some time next week.

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!

ivo 2 microsoft 0 (gui own goal)

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

Click to expand...

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"

classic shell is the boss

Hi Konst.. well I didn't know that - many thanks
I have done many searches on email and windows 7 but that never showed up
I shall install Windows Mail next... (and again Microsoft shoots itself in the foot)

So now I just installed Classic Shell on my Win7 pc (I did the Vista PC before) - and I thought I may as well have the classic start bar as well..
and it's just so much better - everything is in one place - all programs are in one list SO I KNOW WHERE TO FIND THEM INSTANTLY (ARE YOU LISTENING MICROSOFT?)

really, this is basic usability stuff - put the controls where the user can find them and don't split things unnecessarily
so I don't have the search program box instantly to hand - wow, that's not a big loss

after installing and getting it set up (in the two minutes it took) I got this big calm relieved feeling that you usually only get after making lurrve

[as an ex Mac user from long ago I found a number of the OSX features equally annoying so, no, I don't want to use a Mac or have vile expanding icon bars]

now, more clarifaction on why the UP button is so much better
lets say you are a web developer (I am) and I am in a folder where my javascript lives - I want to go to my website root which I know is two folders above, so all I want to do is whack the mouse to the up button, click twice and I'm there
I have a lot of other stuff in my head as I'm coding and answering a phone call, so I do not want to read, semantically process, guide mouse to required folder name and click .. all I want is click, click, done

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.