Classic Shell is a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but are removed from Vista and Windows 7. It has a classic start menu for Windows 7 and Windows 8, it adds a toolbar for Windows Explorer and supports a variety of smaller features. There are 3 major components - Classic Explorer, Classic Start Menu and Classic IE9. Look here for the full list of features.
Classic Shell features:
- Classic Start Menu for Windows 7, 8 (with skins)
- Toolbar for Windows Explorer
- Classic copy UI
- Show file size in Explorer status bar
Classic Start Menu is a clone of the original start menu. It has a variety of advanced features:
- Drag and drop to let you organize your applications
- Options to show Favorites, expand Control Panel, etc
- Shows recently used documents. The number of documents to display is customizable
- Translated in 35 languages, including Right-to-left support for Arabic and Hebrew
- Does not disable the original start menu in Windows. You can access it by Shift+Click on the start button
- Right-click on an item in the menu to delete, rename, sort, or perform other tasks
- The search box helps you find your programs without getting in the way of your keyboard shortcuts
- Available for 32 and 64-bit operating systems
- Has support for skins, including additional 3rd party skins
- Fully customizable in both looks and functionality
- Support for Microsoft’s Active Accessibility
- Converts the “All Programs” button in the Windows menu into a cascading menu (Vista and Windows 7)
- Implements a customizable start button for Windows 8
- And last but not least – it"s FREE!
Classic Explorer is a plugin for Windows Explorer that:
- Adds a toolbar to Explorer for some common operations (Go to parent folder, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, Properties, Email). The toolbar is fully customizable
- Replaces the copy UI in Vista and Windows 7 with the more user-friendly “classic” version similar to Windows XP
- Handles Alt+Enter in the folder panel of Windows Explorer and shows the properties of the selected folder
- Has options for customizing the folder panel to look more like the Windows XP version or to not fade the expand buttons
- Can show the free disk space and the total file size in the status bar
- Can disable the breadcrumbs in the address bar
- Fixes a long list of features that are broken in Windows 7 – missing icon overlay for shared folders, the jumping folders in the navigation pane, missing sorting headers in list view, and more
Classic IE9 is a plugin for Internet Explorer 9 that:
- Adds a caption to the title bar so you can see the full title of the page
- Shows the security zone in the status bar
- Shows the loading progress in the status bar
What"s new in this version:
- Improved support for high resolution displays. Skin elements can be scaled with the DPI resolution. Read more about it here.
- Improved support for touch displays
- New buttons for Explorer to toggle the navigation pane, details pane and preview pane
- Added support for animated start buttons. See how to make one here.
- Multiple minor improvements and bugfixes
New features:
- New setting in Classic Start Menu: Invert Metro icon color
- New setting in Classic Explorer to not show the share overlay icon for hidden shares (hidden shares have the $ character in their name)
- New setting in Classic Start Menu for Windows 8.1 to only show the Start button on the primary taskbar
- New system for generating localized Group Policy (ADML) files
- Drives and folders can be pinned to the Start Menu from Explorer
- Touch support for scrolling single-column menus with a finger
- New setting for the installer "NOSTART=1" to disable the automatic launch of the Start Menu after installation
Bug fixes, design changes and minor new additions:
- Ctrl+Backspace in the Start Menu search box deletes the previous word or path component
- Fixed the problem where settings did not get migrated when upgrading from 3.6.8 to 4.0.4
- Dragging a folder to the Pinned folder creates an expandable/cascading menu shortcut in the Start Menu
- Fixed a bug where the text is misaligned in the Start Menu Programs tree when you switch from the Classic to the Windows Aero skin
- The Start Menu search box in high-contrast Classic skin uses the correct high contrast color instead of white
- Pinning a shortcut preserves the localized name from Desktop.ini if there is one
- The REST_NOCLOSE Windows Group Policy correctly disables Shutdown, Restart etc in the Start Menu for all styles
- The Shutdown button of the Classic skin for the Start Menu shows a focus rectangle when the keyboard cues are enabled
- Fixed a bug in the Classic styles where you can"t execute a UNC path if autocomplete was turned off
- The Classic Start Menu Settings UI now has the option to hide the Pin context menu item
- The Classic Start Menu Settings UI now has the options for setting menu width and Shutdown commands in Windows 7 style
- Fixed the problem with a click on the auto-hide taskbar being ignored when the Start menu is open
- Right-click on the Start button works even when the menu is opened or when the hover delay is 0
- Fixed a bug where multi-column submenus with large padding can go outside of the screen
Download: Classic Shell 4.0.5 | 6.5 MB (Open Source)
View: Homepage | Screenshots | Release Notes