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 if 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:
- The All Programs tree can be rearranged with drag and drop
- The start button settings are applied immediately and you can see a preview of the button image in the settings dialog
- The start menu can use the native Windows 8.1 start button
- The Windows 8.1 setting to skip the Metro screen can be accessed through the Classic Shell settings
- New item in the main menu to open the start screen (Windows 8 and 8.1)
- New setting for the Windows 7 style to control the height of the main menu
- The installer uses better compression that reduces the download size by half
- Many bugfixes reported for the previous beta version
Note: Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 are no longer supported.
Download: Classic Shell 3.9.1 Beta | 4.9 MB (Open Source)
View: Homepage | Screenshots
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