The Vista Start Menu

September 27, 2008

Windows Vista, the Start Menu has undergone some significant changes. One of the chief additions is a Search box, where users may begin typing immediately. The contents of the Start menu itself are indexed and searchable, besides the global search index. If indexing is turned on, the search box returns results on-the-fly as users type into it. This allows launching applications relatively quickly than navigating to the shortcut through cascading menus. The Start menu search also doubles as the Run command from previous versions of Windows; simply typing any command will execute it. The Run command can also be added separately to the right column in the Start menu.

Another major change to the Start menu in Windows Vista is that it no longer presents the All programs menu as a horizontally expanding cascading list which utilizes the entire screen space, but instead as a nested folder view with a fixed size. The list of submenus and single items appears over the left column contents with a Back button below it. Subfolders expand and collapse vertically within the list when single-clicked, in a tree-like fashion similar to Windows Explorer. Single items appear at the top and folders appear at the bottom.

A dynamically changing icon showing the user’s display picture by default is present at the top of the right column. It changes as users hover over any other item to reflect that item’s icon. The Power button’s action is configurable through Power options in the Control Panel. Users can quickly lock their user account by pressing the Lock button. Additional power and account related actions are listed in a sub-menu which appears when the small arrow next to the Lock button is clicked.

Need more tips like this?

Then subscribe to the Marc Talks Tech newsletter:

http://www.marctalkstech.com

Regards

Marc Liron – Microsoft MVP

Marc Liron

Posted by marc | Filed Under Blog 

Comments

Got something to say?

You must be logged in to post a comment.