Classic Shell: Forum

I recently bought a new laptop loaded w/ the abominable Win8 and was grateful to be steered onto CS as a way to salvage this ridiculous OS by MS. I applaud all the bright minds that created the CS utility.

This is my first post to this forum. I am curious about how to add shortcuts to the Start Menu. I browsed a bit and found this post:

http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=210

which references this list of FAQs:

http://www.classicshell.net/faq/#menu_folder
Both were interesting but didn't seem to quite answer the key questions. I always believed that a picture's worth 1000 words, so I annotated a couple screen shots with my questions. Please see the attached (2 screens). The questions are impossible to miss.

Any enlightenment would be appreciated.

1) Menu style - the style is not a setting. It is basically a "button", which configures the menu in a certain way. The "selection" you see is just the focus rectangle. It shows which control has the focus.

2) The top area in the start menu is for the recently used programs. When you start a program from the start menu it will be added to the top of the list

3) The area below shows the contents of the Start Menu folder. Some installers place shortcuts there. You can drag more into that area using the mouse. You can drag them from the Programs sub-menu, from the Desktop, from Explorer, etc. If you are dragging something from outside the start menu, hover over the start button to open it

Thanks for your reply. I embed my comments:

[quote]1) Menu style - the style is not a setting. It is basically a "button", which configures the menu in a certain way. The "selection" you see is just the focus rectangle. It shows which control has the focus. [/quote]
Then why does the [i]rectangle focus[/i] on WindowsClassic when I keep clicking Windows XP? When I click on Windows XP, the rectangle focuses on this choice, as expected. But when I close and open later, it has returned back to Windows Classic. Most software accepts things like this as this as a setting and, when you revisit the dialog, it presents what you last selected and will remain so unless & until you change it again. I hope I'm making sense.
[quote]
2) The top area in the start menu is for the recently used programs. When you start a program from the start menu it will be added to the top of the list[/quote]
Ah-hah ... This is what I suspected. I had a sneaking suspicion. In fact, I just added something to the Desktop and, when I looked in the "upper region", I saw it added as the 1st item in the list.
[quote]3) The area below shows the contents of the Start Menu folder. Some installers place shortcuts there. You can drag more into that area using the mouse. You can drag them from the Programs sub-menu, from the Desktop, from Explorer, etc. If you are dragging something from outside the start menu, hover over the start button to open it[/quote]
In the Start Menu dialog, there are 2 columns:
[b]Current Menu Items Available Commands:[/b]

Let's start with "You can drag then from the Programs sub-menu ..." That already occurred to me. I went to the Programs under Available Commands and clicked it (to pen it up). It simply copied as ProgramMenu2 into the left-hand column. Stranger yet, it didn't show up when I opened the Start menu. I also tried to simply drag shortcuts off my Desktop into the left-hand column but it wouldn't let me do it.

When you mentioned the "Start Menu folder", that reminded me of my XP days. In a simper XP worls, I simplyu went to the Docs & Settings|Start Menu folder and also opened up the Desktop folder. I then very simply draged items fro hy desktop folder toteh Startup folder. nother was ever easier; I was done in 2 minutes!

So what can we do here? I decided to search for my Desktop folder. I used the Search utility under the Start Menu, and it brought up the Search dialog (which I set to XP-like in its control dialog). I entered 'Desktop' in the search field and it brought up the Desktop folder. I clicked it and saw my Desktop items. Only one serious problem: Very much UNlike WinXP (and earlier), nowhere (and I mean nowhere) is the [b][u]path[/u][/b] to the folder displayed!!! This is very frustrating - a search function that does not display the path is useless. So unfortunately, it's impossible to browse to the Desktop & Startup folders to do the deed manually (if you will).

Pardon my frustration, but I'm sure many other folks have seen what I'm describing. Any more thoughts are welcome.

1) The focus rectangle means "focused", not "selected". The focused UI element is the one that will get the keyboard input. For example when you press Space, that control will be activated. By default when you open a new dialog the first control gets the focus. That's why Classic is focused - because it is first.

3) You need to drag programs to the start menu, not to the settings dialog. Simply grab a program from Explorer, drag it onto the start button, wait for the menu to open, and drop it. This will create a shortcut to the program you are dragging.

Alternatively, you can right-click on the start button, and select Open. This will open the Start Menu folder in Explorer. Drag any programs you want into that folder. They will appear in the start menu.

Ok, I think I finally got it. The key was Start | Open. This led me to the Start folder (as you said) and on the left hand side I saw the Desktop folder. I opened it and copied a few shortcuts and pasted them into the Start folder. It worked fine. Best of all, when I went to the Start folder, I saw the entire pathway displayed!

So I return to me other question:

Can anyone please tell me how to get the path to display on the Search result? It is conspicuously missing.

I can attach a window to illustrate this problem if need be.


btw, the text attributes (quotes, italics, bolding, etc.) I used in my last post did NOT work. They seem to be working now. Mystery ...

Are you asking about the search results in Explorer? The path shows in the Folder column, however it is shown in a retarded way:
folder name (parent path)

Again, a picture is always worth 1000 words. The attached clearly illustrates the problem. When Bill Gates' little kids up in Redmond, WA "advanced" the Windows OS beyond XP, the moves were in fact HUGE retrogrades backwards. I could go on for hours but I'll restrain myself. There are enough wise users who have rightfully bashed Win8 that I don't really have to chime in.

Win8 doesn't value a little thing called "PATH", which is something that looks like 'C:\ ...'

To its great credit, ClassicShell has done a lot to help salvage the OS functionality but unfortunately, I don't see anything that helps with regards to the all-important path on a search mission. As I show dramatically in my attachment, the best way to appreciate the omission it to look at WinXP again, for the first time.

Okay, I see. So you are navigating to a folder from within search results, after which Windows XP showed the folder path again and later versions behave annoyingly and show "Search results in <folder name>" instead of showing the path in the address bar. As a workaround, you can right click the "Desktop" (or whatever item in the search result), choose "Open folder location" and then double click the folder.

If you want to view the path for search results itself, there is a separate "folder path" column which isn't retarded or just a "Path" column which displays the file's full path.

_________________
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.

Btw I think might be a good idea to label the sections in the Start Menu as "Recent", "Frequent" or "Pinned" like jumplists do (even if it's not true pinning, for simplifying to the end user). That way there is no confusion which is which even if Recent Programs is on top or bottom, with or without numbers, plus it kinda looks neat and organized.

_________________
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.

I strongly support GauravK's latest comment - that would be huge.

Regarding GauravK's other post on 02/12/13, thanks for finally understanding what I've been trying to say. I finally got around to testing your suggestions. I did not see 'Open folder location' or any 'separate "folder path" column' - not at least in those exact words.

Here's what I can say:

When you do the Start | Search, enter 'Desktop' in the field (upper right-hand corner of screen), it brings up a results list. Upon further staring at this list, I now realize that the path, where applicable, actually appears under each item.

Alternatively, one can select (highlight w/ 1 click) an item and click the Open the location icon (to the left of Close search). This clearly displays the path.

I guess all's well that ends well; I am now able to find paths in Win8.