Classic Shell: Forum

I've been using Classic Shell since shortly after I got Win7, and consider it one of the must-have installs (I can't stand the mobile-style Win7 default Start Menu...and the version of CS that added--or from my perspective, restored--the ability to drag and drop things in the Start Menu was a thing of great rejoicing here. ).

That said...I currently have 3.6.5 installed and from what I can tell most of the features that have been added since then are for Win8, to deal with their cranial-rectal inversion about trying to force tablet/touchscreen UI on desktop users. Are there any upgrades/tweaks/improvements relevant to Win7 users, or should I stick with the version I have and just turn off the update (for that matter, is 3.6.8 even useful to me to install at this point)?

Don't get me wrong, here, I'm not complaining about the focus on 8--I'm just wondering if it's basically considered 'Job Done' for the Win7 side of things.

Most of the new features work on Windows 7. You get the Windows 7 style for the start menu, a list of frequently used programs, search for files and more. Only a very small number of features are specific to Windows 8, mostly related to launching Metro apps.

If you are using 3.6.5, a lot has been added that's useful for Windows 7 users too (here's a list of features relevant to Windows 7 users:

• The list of Classic Shell settings can be searched to easily find the setting you need. When searching a Classic Shell setting, you can right-click on a setting and choose "Locate" and it will show you which tab it is on
• New programs are automatically highlighted in the Classic style menu too
• The search results category headers can be expanded/closed within the menu itself using Enter key or by clicking them. Clicking on the header's text (or Ctrl Enter) opens results in Explorer
• Support for wildcard filtering of paths in the search box e.g. C:\Windows\*.exe or %tmp%\*.log
• Enhanced keyboard shortcuts like Home/End/Page Up/Page Down in addition to F2, Del, Alt+Enter etc working everywhere
• Shift+Win uses a hotkey instead of a keyboard hook so it will give less problems and work with elevated programs
• The icons and data are saved to a cache on disk at %APPDATA%\ClassicShell, so the menu should stay responsive all the time (this is a major improvement over 3.6.x).
• New setting to override the color used by the menu in its glass areas
• The Start Button settings are applied live and you can see a preview of the button image in the settings dialog

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Links to some general topics:

● Compare Start Menus

● Read the Search box usage guide.

I am a Windows enthusiast and helped a little with Classic Shell's testing and usability/UX feedback.