Section 5.6. Customizing the Start Menu


5.6. Customizing the Start Menu

It's possible to live a long and happy life without ever tampering with the Start menu. In fact, for many people, the idea of making it look or work differently comes dangerously close to nerd territory.

Still, knowing how to manipulate the Start menu listings may come in handy someday, and provides an interesting glimpse into the way Windows works. And tweaking it to reflect your way of doing things can pay off in efficiency down the road.


Note: Thanks to the User Accounts feature described in Chapter 15, any changes you make to the Start menu apply only to you . Each person with an account on this PC has an independent, customized Start menu. When you sign onto the machine using your name and password, Windows Vista loads your customized Start menu.

5.6.1. Start Menu Settings

Microsoft offers a fascinating set of customization options for the Start menu. It's hard to tell whether these options were selected by a scientific usability study or by a dartboard, but you're likely to find something that suits you.

To view and change the basic options, right-click the Start menu; from the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Now the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box opens, as seen in Figure 5-7.

Figure 5-7. Top: On this first screen, you can turn off the new, improved Vista two-column Start menu design to return to the single-column Classic Start menu design of Windows versions gone by. Click Customize to get to the good stuff. (The Privacy checkboxes refer to the lower-left section of the Start menu, which lists the programs you use most often, and the Recent Items submenu, which lists documents you've had open . Turn these off if you don't want to risk your supervisor coming by while you're up getting coffee, and noticing that your most recently used programs are Tetris Max, Myst IV, Tomb Raider, and Quake.)
Bottom: Here's the Customize Start Menu dialog box.


When you click the Customize button, you see the dialog box shown at right in Figure 5-7. Here you're offered a random assortment of Start-menu tweaks, neatly listed in alphabetical order; they affect the Start menu in some fairly simple yet profound ways. Here, among other things, is where you'll find the show/hide switches for commands on the right side of the Start menuComputer, Control Panel, Documents, Games, Music, Personal folder, and so on.

Beneath each of these headings, you'll find three options. The middle one, "Display as a menu," is extremely useful. It means that instead of simply listing the name of a folder (which is what "Display as a link" means), your Start menu sprouts a submenu listing the contents of that folder, as shown at bottom in Figure 5-8.

Figure 5-8. Left: When "Display as a link" is selected for Control Panel, you can't open a particular Control Panel program directly. Instead, you must choose Start Control Panel, which opens the Control Panel window; now its up to you to open the program you want.
Right: Turning on "Display as a menu" saves you a step; you now get a submenu that lists each Control Panel program. By clicking one, you can open it directly. This feature saves you the trouble of opening a folder window (such as Control Panel or Documents), double-clicking an icon inside it, and then closing the window again.


5.6.2. Adding Icons to the Start Menu

Usually, when you install a new program, its installer automatically inserts the program's name and icon in your Start All Programs menu. There may be times, however, when you want to add something to the Start menu yourself, such as a folder, document, or even a disk.

5.6.2.1. The "free" sections of the Start menu

In the following pages, you'll read several references to the "free" portions of the Start menu. These are the two areas that you, the lowly human, are allowed to modify freelyadding, removing, renaming, or sorting as you see fit:

  • The top-left section of the Start menu . This little area lists what Microsoft calls pinned programs and filesthings you use often enough that you want a fairly permanent list of them at your fingertips.

  • The All Programs menu . This, of course, is the master list of programs (and anything elsedocuments, folders, disksyou want to see listed).

5.6.2.2. Dragging onto the Start menu

Here's how to add an icon to one of the free areas:

  1. Locate the icon you want to add to your Start menu .

    It can be an application, a document, a folder you frequently access, one of the programs in your Control Panel's folder, or even your hard drive or CD-drive icon.

  2. Drag it directly onto the Start button .

    If you release the mouse now, Windows adds the name of the icon you've just dragged to the bottom of the "pinned items" list (Figure 5-9, right). You're now welcome to drag it up or down within this list.

    Figure 5-9. Left: You can add something to the top of your Start menu by dragging it (from whatever folder it's in) onto the Start button to open the Start menu, and then dragging it directly into position. (Once the Start menu is open, you can also drag it onto the All Programs linkand once that menu is open, drag it anywhere in that list.)
    Right: When you release the mouse, you'll find that the item is happily ensconced where you dropped it. Remember, too, that you're always free to drag anything up or down in the "free" areas of the menu: the circled area shown here, and the All Programs list.


    Alternatively, if you keep the mouse button pressed as you drag onto the Start button, the Start menu itself opens. As long as the button is still pressed, you can drag the new icon wherever you want among the items listed in the top-left section of the menu (Figure 5-9, left).

    Similarly, if you drag to the Start button and then onto the All Programs command without releasing the mouse, you can place it exactly where you want in the Start All Programs menu.


Tip: If " Sort All Programs menu by name" is not turned on, your All Programs list may gradually become something of a mess.If you want to restore some order to itspecifically, alphabeticaljust right-click anywhere on the open All Programs menu and choose Sort by Name from the shortcut menu.

5.6.3. Removing Icons from the Start Menu

When it comes time to prune an overgrown Start menu, there are three different sets of instructions, depending on which section of the Start menu needs purging.

  • The left-side column and All Programs list . Right-click the item you've targeted for extinction , and then, from the shortcut menu, choose either "Remove from this list" or "Delete."

    In both cases, you're only deleting the shortcut that appears on the menu. Deleting items from the Start menu doesn't actually uninstall any software.

  • The right-side column . Open the Properties Customize dialog box for the Start menu (Section 5.6), and then turn off the checkboxes for the items you want expunged.

5.6.4. Renaming Start-Menu Items

Although few people realize it, you can rename anything in the Start menu's left side. Click the Start menu to open it, right-click the command you want to rename, and choose Rename from the shortcut menu. The name of the command sprouts a little editing box. Type the new name and then press Enter.

5.6.5. Reorganizing the Start Menu

To change the order of listings in the "free" portions of the Start menu, including the All Programs list, just drag the commands up and down the lists as you see fit. As you drag an item, a black line appears to show you the resulting location of your dragging action. Release the mouse when the black line is where you want the relocated icon to appear.


Tip: If you change your mind while you're dragging, press the Esc key to leave everything as it was.

You can drag program names from the lower-left section of the Start menu, toobut only into one of the "free" areas.




Windows Vista for Starters
Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596528264
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 175
Authors: David Pogue

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