Menu Inventor

[Midas]

Poorly known but somewhat well regarded menu utility; the development of this very lightweight 32 bit FLOSS seems to have stopped long ago, but in my summary tests on Windows 7 x64 SP1 everything worked alright -- it seems to be perfectly portable, with the settings kept in text files alongside the program (default.mcf, pointing to other text files, *.mxf for the menu structure, *.mig for skins and *.mis for icon sets, making it totally configurable and able to switch menu layouts on the go). Menu Inventor also doubles as a launcher for the apps it knows of.

Menu Inventor is a free alternative to the Windows Start menu, offering a modern, clean interface, organizing your menu without clutter and launching tasks with just a few clicks. With on-the-fly editing, you can customize, re-invent and tweak your menu to perfection.

Latest version is 1.11 contained in a patch file that can be uniextracted to the stable 1.1 version files location (also uniextractable). Be advised that the 'Hide menu after launching an item' settings option, introduced in the latest version, doesn't seem to be working.

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/menuit/ (click on 'Browse all files' below the download button to get to stable v1.1 folder...)

[allclownsareevil]

This utility would only be useful if MicroSoft were to do release an operating system that didn't have a start menu .... but that's a really dumb idea. No way they'd ever do that. Surely, right?


Thanks for the post.

[guinness]

This utility would only be useful if MicroSoft were to do release an operating system that didn't have a start menu .... but that's a really dumb idea. No way they'd ever do that. Surely, right?
Thanks for the post.

Define a 'Start Menu'. If you meant an application or area to quickly access/open applications then no I don't think they have released an OS without this facility either.

[allclownsareevil]

Define a 'Start Menu'. If you meant an application or area to quickly access/open applications then no I don't think they have released an OS without this facility either.

It's not as comprehensive as the traditional start menu, it's effectively more like a "favourites" panel. Ok for tablet users and maybe even low usage pc users. Not that great for people that want access to 95% of everything in a single place.

On a lighter note .... it was clearly a joke.

[guinness]

On a lighter note .... it was clearly a joke.

I did sense sarcasm, but thought I would answer still.

[allclownsareevil]

sarcasm

Sarcasm????! That's cold man, real cold. I'm hurt now.

(I can't work out if this post is sarcastic also ... or ironic because I'm using sarcasm about being sarcastic. This needs further consideration. I may return to you on this.)

[lautrepay]

Before discovering Classic Shell I used this KDE classic start menu clone for a few months, a couple of years ago. Then I lost it (the program and the name, therefore, thanks Midas for bringing it back to my memory).
If I remember correctly:
1) It is completely portable, but leaves behind one registry key, related to the VB6 dependence.
2) From time to time I had to close and reopen it, because the performance decreased with the usage (this on an old computer with a Celeron and few RAM).
3) Initially, it was quite tedious to configure all the items I wanted.
4) Its great advantage over the common portable menus was the possibility to place it above the current Windows start menu. And it didn't look bad at all.

[guinness]

sarcasm

Sarcasm????! That's cold man, real cold. I'm hurt now.

(I can't work out if this post is sarcastic also ... or ironic because I'm using sarcasm about being sarcastic. This needs further consideration. I may return to you on this.)

Ha ha, nice OR should should I be sincere!? (Rhetorical question.)

[Midas]

My post is somewhat summary because it is about abandonware, but substitute "portable menu" where it reads "Start Menu" in the description above ...

BTW, cool avatar, allclownsareevil.