Much like Classic Start Menu, it is very customizable, so you don't have to use all of its features.īefore you spend any money on a Start Menu replacement for Windows 8, you absolutely must check out Classic Shell.
In other words, Classic Start Menu is just like the Start Menu you know and love, only more customizable.Ĭlassic Explorer fixes Windows Explorer annoyances by adding a toolbar with common operations (copy/paste, go to parent folder, etc.), showing the free disk space and the total size of the selected files in the status bar, disabling breadcrumbs on the address bar, and more. Never use the Printers item? No problem, you can easily make it go away. You can pin items to the Start menu, and customize every aspect of it. Start typing to search for programs, hit Enter to launch. Hit the Windows key on your keyboard, and up pops a Start menu, just like you remember it from Windows 7 (or Windows Vista, or Windows XP–you can choose your own skin). These are interface patterns that worked and that Microsoft took away for reasons unknown.Ĭlassic Shell's most newsworthy component is Classic Start Menu. It doesn't try to invent anything new: In the project's own words, Classic Shell is "a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but were later removed." You're not going to find any groundbreaking UI innovations here, but that's a good thing.
That tendency of software projects to grow and morph over time is exactly what Classic Shell sets out to fix.
As software projects are wont to do, Classic Shell grew over time, and now consists of three separate parts: Classic Explorer, Classic Start Menu, and Classic IE9. That was version 0.9 (the first publicly available version), and today, more than three years later, it's at version 3.6.4. At the time, it was meant to fix interface annoyances in Windows Vista. Its first version came out in November 2009, long before Windows 8 was even close to public. Unlike most Start menu replacements, Classic Shell has been around for a while. But you don't need to pay to get a Start button: There's one tool that's free, open-source, and very customizable. Until that happens, there's a flourishing niche of aftermarket utilities that bring the Start button (and menu) back to Windows 8, from excellent ones like Stardock's Start8, to ones that add value like Pokki. Maybe in time, Windows 8's Modern-style Start Screen will grow on users and it'll turn out Microsoft was right all along. If you don't think that's something that needs fixing, you're probably in the minority, at least for now.
0 kommentar(er)
