Start Menu

 

On this page you can learn how to efficiently work with the Start menu, download a free prototype Start menu to see if you like it, learn how to easily create an entirely original Start Menu, and learn how to migrate over to it.  But first, a little about the philosophy of menu design.

 

Organize your Start Menu according to activity, not application provider;  i.e. Office, Photography, Music, Audio/Visual, Drawing, System Tools..., not  Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, Symantec,…, which is how many applications install. 

 

Create a hierarchical menu in order to keep each level of the menu reasonably small so that it's quick to scan and get to any item.  If you constantly use certain apps keep them at the top level, better yet put a shortcut on the desktop.  Apps you use infrequently can be nested deeply, but should be easy/logical to find.  Figure 1. below is a good example of such a menu. 

 

 

But, how does one create a hierarchical menu?  It's impossible to accomplish anything working with the Start Menu itself:  clicking on , hovering over , then dragging items around in the menus.   In order to work effectively with the Start Menu, you have to work in the folders that control it. 

 

 

There are usually two such folders:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs and

C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Start Menu\Programs,

where %username% is the name that appears at the top of your Start dialog, e.g. David in Figure 1.

They're just normal folders;  the only thing that's special about them is how Explorer interprets them.  Explorer makes the Start > All Programs menu by combining the two.  They're full of shortcuts and/or sub-folders.  Shortcuts point to the actual programs you want to run, and sub-folders are interpreted as sub-menus. 

In an OS setup for several users, All Users\Start Menu\Programs contains the menu of programs that everybody can use, and

Settings\%Username%\Start Menu\Programs contains those only individual user %username% can use.

 

 

 

Figure 1.

 

 

First Look at Start Menu\Programs

 

Below is the sample Start > All Programs menu again, with the corresponding Start Menu\Programs folder contents next to it.  You can see the near-perfect mapping of the folders to the menu.  Check out one of the mappings on your own computer and see for yourself.  If you change the folders, you've changed the menu. 

 

 

 

Figure 2.

 

 

Working in Start Menu\Programs

 

An easy way to get to the folders is: right click on , then left click on Explore All Users at the bottom of the pop-up menu, or on Explore at the top of the pop-up.  Be sure to notice: that's a right click on Start, left click on Explore...

1.  Startright > Explore All Users takes you to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs, and the other to:

2.  Startright > Explore takes you to C:\Documents and Settings\%Username%\Start Menu\Programs. 

 

If you're inexperienced, just do an experiment to gain some confidence.  Go to Start Menu\Programs (Startright > Explore All Users), and make a new folder called Test in it.  Now do (call this Startleft > All Programs),  and look for the new sub-menu Test you just made.  Now make another new folder inside folder Test, called Test1.  Do Startleft > All Programs again, and look for Test > Test1.  Get it?  Now delete Test.  The sub-menus are gone.

 

 

Build a New, Better Start Menu

 

 

 
This Figure explains the philosophy behind the illustrated top level Start menu, that is, what sort of applications go into which sub-menus.  You can test drive this menu if you'd like.  Scroll down a little to see how.
Infrequently used programs, like system tools, administration, I/O device configuration, ...
for creating and editing drawings for construction and other projects
Anything to do with photography, painting, photo scanners, editors, organizers, etc.
for dealing with mass storage devices like Hard Disks, CDs, and DVDs
for dealing with your PDA, mobile phone, GPS, etc.
for dealing with music scores, MIDI, etc.
for office applications like Word, Excel, Quicken, TurboTax
Emule, Bittorrent, WinMX, etc.
audio/video players like Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Quicktime, Divx, etc.
programming tools, Integrated Development Environment, etc.
anything to do with making, editing, and repairing sound files
a system file you can't get rid of
frequently used tools, like grep, screenshots, ActiveSync, bulk rename
anything to do with making, editing, and repairing video.
web tools like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Flash, ...
anything to do with the written word, either on your PC or the web
 

Figure 3.

You have two choices now: to try the sample Start Menu (this Section), or skip to the next Section to build an entirely original Start Menu.

If you want to test drive the Start menu in Figure 3., download self-extracting zip file startmenutry.exe .  Click on it and extract to folder startmenutry on your desktop or anywhere convenient for you.  Open folder startmenutry.  It contains startmenubackup.bat,  startmenurestore.bat,  and folders ZZZZZZ and Z.

Click on Startmenubackup to backup the entire folder structures of All Users\Start Menu\programs\ and %Username%\Start Menu\programs\, to folders Documents and Settings\backupstartmenuallusers\ and Documents and Settings\backupstartmenuusername\.  Check on them for your own comfort. We're not going to remove or change your current Start menu much.  The backup is only in case you start to make changes yourself and then don't like them. 

All we're going to do for this test drive is drag folder ZZZZZZ to your menu.  So, do Startright > Explore All Users to go to Start Menu\Programs.  Drag ZZZZZZ into folder Start Menu\Programs.  Now, when you  Startleft > All Programs, your menu will have the new sub-menu ZZZZZZ, which is the test drive.  Navigate around in it to get the feel of it.  The deepest part of the hierarchy is at Accessories > System tools.  Check it out.

If you like the structure of ZZZZZZ you can just keep it, and edit out the shortcuts you don't want.  If you want to use the basic structure but don't want all the shortcuts that populate it, delete ZZZZZZ and drag in Z; it's the same structure, but just the structure, without the shortcut contents.

If you'd like to build an entirely original new Start Menu, not using any of the sample, that's fine.  You can create any folder structure you want -similar to this one or not - by clicking here to download the batch file menus.bat.  Now, create a new folder anywhere you like, called XXXXXX for example.  Move menus.bat there, and open it in your editor.  Read the instructions and edit it in order to construct whatever folder structure you want.  Once you're happy with the structure you've created, you can  drag XXXXXX to Start Menu\Programs for a test drive.

Migrate from Old to New

The basic idea is to get your old Start Menu onscreen in one window and the new one onscreen in another, so that you can drag and drop efficiently.  What we want is this:  The left window is your old Start Menu, either in Start Menus\Programs itself, or in Documents and Settings\backupstartmenuallusers\, or \backupstartmenuusername, whatever's appropriate.  The right window is your new Start Menu, in ZZ, ZZZZZZ, or XXXXXX, depending on the choices you made above.

Figure 4.

 Now you can drag the shortcuts from your old Start menu to the new one.  Once you have your new menu populated just as you like, clear leftover junk out of Programs,  and move the new stuff in.  You're all set.