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 Windows 10 TH2
- Improved support for the Edge browser
- Improved search performance and responsiveness
- New feature to uninstall Metro apps from the start menu
- Full transparency support for the Metro and Midnight skins
Detailed change log:
New features in Classic Shell 4.2.5:
- Classic Start Menu"s cascading menus are now more powerful than ever. You can now enter two folders in the Link property of an item, separated by a semicolon. You will get their combined contents in one sub-menu!
- Support for search providers in Windows 7 style also: If a custom item has %1 or %2 in its command, it is considered a Search Provider and will show up during searches at the bottom of the results. You can use this functionality to add any website, or an external program with the appropriate parameters so the Start Menu search box contents will be passed on to this search provider.
- The search for programs and settings reuses the result from the previous search until the new results are calculated for extremely fast searching
- New feature to uninstall apps for Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 by right-clicking
- New setting for the Win key and Start button click to open the Windows Menu when in Tablet mode but Classic Start Menu otherwise
- The Metro and Midnight skins support transparency in both columns in Windows 7 style
- New support for per-monitor DPI. The text and menu elements are scaled independently for each monitor. The icon size depends on the global system DPI
- The limit for recent/frequent apps is raised to 40.
Other minor changes:
- When dropping a file on a program in the main menu, the program is highlighted
- The Metro skin uses an accent color so at least the background will change correctly when the wallpaper changes
- The selection in the transparent Metro skins has a border to make it more visible
- Fix for the bug where All Programs doesn"t work with the tab key when the touch keyboard is shown
- Fix for the gap that appears in the Classic style when the MRU list is cleared
- When the menu hover time is set to 0, the multiplier for All Programs delay uses the value of 100 instead
- Pressing Enter during the search will execute the first found result when it is available
- Searching the Internet works with Microsoft Edge
- When Edge is the default browser, Favorites shows its bookmarks
- Fix for jumplists not showing up in the new builds of Windows 10
- If a Metro app name fails to resolve, it is added to a blacklist so the menu doesn"t become unresponsive while dealing with that app. If the app is later found in the Apps folder, it is removed from the blacklist
Download: Classic Shell 4.2.5 | 6.6 MB (Freeware)
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