Classic Shell

New copy UI

In Vista when you copy files and there is a conflict you are presented with this:

What’s wrong with it?

Well, for starters it is half a screen full of text that you have to read. Also it is not immediately clear what parts of it are clickable. You have to move the mouse around to discover the UI like in a Lucas Arts adventure game. And finally the keyboard usability is awful. To tell it “yes, I know what I’m doing, I want to overwrite all files” you have to press Alt+D, up, up, up, Space! It is harder than performing the Akuma Kara Demon move in Street Fighter 3. There is a time and a place for that stuff and copying files is not it.

The Classic Explorer plugin brings back the simpler dialog box from Windows XP:

It is immediately clear what is clickable (clue – the buttons at the bottom), there is easy keyboard navigation (press Y for “Yes”, A to copy all files) and you can still see which file is newer and which is larger. And of course just like in Windows XP, holding down Shift while clicking on the No button means "No to All" (or just press Shift+N).

If you click on More… you will get the original dialog from Windows. From there you will see all the details and you’ll get an extra option to “Copy, but keep both files”.

Important Note: Only the UI is replaced. The underlying system that does the actual copying is not affected.

Alt+Enter in the folder panel

Alt+Enter is universal shortcut across Windows to bring up the properties of the selection. But in Vista and Windows 7 it doesn’t work in the left panel that shows the folders. It works fine on the right where the files are. This is broken compared to Windows XP where Alt+Enter works in both places.

To solve the problem, the Classic Explorer plugin detects when you press Alt+Enter and shows the properties for the currently selected folder.

Alternative start menu implementations

CSMenu – http://www.csmenu.com/

Classic Windows Start Menu – http://usuarios.lycos.es/coreaffinity/classicwinstartmenu.htm

Classic Start Menu – http://www.classicstartmenu.com/index.html

Vista Start Menu – http://www.vistastartmenu.com/index.html

Seven Classic Start – http://www.sevenclassicstart.com/

If you are not a programmer you can stop reading now. Just download the binaries and install them.

The rest of the article discusses how the different features are implemented.

How Classic Start Menu works

Implementing the menu

• the toolbar supports images directly without the need to fiddle with owner-drawn menus
• the toolbar can be placed in a pager control to make it scrollable if the items don’t fit on screen
• you can right-click on a toolbar but not on a menu
• the toolbar offers some drag/drop functionality that will come handy later

Replacing the standard menu

• The taskbar is a window of class Shell_TrayWnd and no name
• The start button is a window in the same thread as the taskbar. The text of the button is localized and depends on the current OS language
• When you click on the start button, it receives WM_LBUTTONDOWN just like any other window
• When you click on the area around the start button, the taskbar receives WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN message
• There is also a window named Program Manager and class Progman. It is in the same process as the taskbar but in another thread
• When you press the Win button the Progman window receives a message WM_SYSCOMMAND with wParam = SC_TASKLIST

HWND g_StartButton; // the start button window
HWND g_Taskbar; // the taskbar window
UINT g_StartMenuMsg; // a private message posted when the Win key is pressed
 
void ToggleStartMenu(); // function that opens/closes our start menu
 
STARTMENUAPI LRESULT CALLBACK HookProgMan( int code, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam )
{
   if (code==HC_ACTION) {
      MSG *msg=(MSG*)lParam;
      if (msg->message==WM_SYSCOMMAND && (msg->wParam&0xFFF0)==SC_TASKLIST) {
         PostMessage(g_StartButton,g_StartMenuMsg,0,0);
         msg->message=WM_NULL; // stop the window from processing the message
      }
  }
  return CallNextHookEx(NULL,code,wParam,lParam);
}
 
STARTMENUAPI LRESULT CALLBACK HookStartButton( int code, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam )
{
   if (code==HC_ACTION && !g_bInMenu) {
      MSG *msg=(MSG*)lParam;
      if (msg->message==g_StartMenuMsg && msg->hwnd==g_StartButton) {
         // activated by keyboard
         ToggleStartMenu();
         msg->message=WM_NULL;
      }
      if (msg->message==WM_LBUTTONDOWN && msg->hwnd==g_StartButton) {
         // activated by mouse
         ToggleStartMenu();
         msg->message=WM_NULL;
      }
      if (msg->message==WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN && msg->hwnd==g_Taskbar) {
         // activated by mouse
         ToggleStartMenu();
         msg->message=WM_NULL;
      }
   }
   return CallNextHookEx(NULL,code,wParam,lParam);
}

CComPtr<IDropTarget> g_pOriginalTarget;
 
// hook
g_pOriginalTarget=(IDropTarget*)GetProp(g_StartButton,L"OleDropTargetInterface");
if (g_pOriginalTarget)
   RevokeDragDrop(g_StartButton);
CStartMenuTarget *pNewTarget=new CStartMenuTarget();
RegisterDragDrop(g_StartButton,pNewTarget);
pNewTarget->Release();
 
// unhook
if (g_pOriginalTarget)
{
   RevokeDragDrop(g_StartButton);
   RegisterDragDrop(g_StartButton,g_pOriginalTarget);
   g_pOriginalTarget=NULL;
}

Icons

// Retrieves an icon from a shell folder and child ID
int CIconManager::GetIcon( IShellFolder *pFolder, PITEMID_CHILD item,
 bool bLarge )
{
   // get the IExtractIcon object
   CComPtr<IExtractIcon> pExtract;
   HRESULT hr=pFolder->GetUIObjectOf(NULL,1,&item,
 IID_IExtractIcon,NULL,(void**)&pExtract);
   if (FAILED(hr))
      return 0;
 
   // get the icon location
   wchar_t location[_MAX_PATH];
   int index=0;
   UINT flags=0;
 
 hr=pExtract->GetIconLocation(0,location,_countof(location),&index,&flags);
   if (hr!=S_OK)
      return 0;
 
   // extract the icon
   HICON hIcon;
   hr=pExtract->Extract(location,index,bLarge?&hIcon:NULL,bLarge?NULL:&hIcon,
 MAKELONG(LARGE_ICON_SIZE,SMALL_ICON_SIZE));
   if (hr==S_FALSE) {
     // the IExtractIcon object didn't do anything - use ExtractIconEx instead
     if (ExtractIconEx(location,index,bLarge?&hIcon:NULL,bLarge?NULL:&hIcon,1)==1)
         hr=S_OK;
   }
 
   // add to the image list
   index=0;
   if (hr==S_OK) {
      index=ImageList_AddIcon(bLarge?m_LargeIcons:m_SmallIcons,hIcon);
      DestroyIcon(hIcon);
   }
 
   return index;
}

The Programs menu

Why not use IShellMenu?

Recent Documents

System commands

Drag and drop

• showing the insert mark where an item can be dropped (use the TB_SETINSERTMARK message)
• detect when the mouse hovers over a submenu and open it after some delay
• reorder the menu when an item is dragged and dropped into the same menu
• move/copy the item if it is dropped in a different menu. For that we can get IDropTarget from the target folder, and manually call IDropTarget::DragOver and IDropTarget::Drop to get it to perform the operation

CComQIPtr<IAsyncOperation> pAsync=pDataObj;
if (pAsync)
    pAsync->SetAsyncMode(FALSE);

Context menu

How Classic Explorer works

Classic Copy

Alt+Enter in the folder view

HTREEITEM hItem=TreeView_GetSelection(hwndTree);
LPITEMIDLIST pidl=NULL;
while (hItem) {
   TVITEMEX info={TVIF_PARAM,hItem};
   TreeView_GetItem(hwndTree,&info);
   LPITEMIDLIST **pidl1=(LPITEMIDLIST**)info.lParam;
   if (!pidl1 || !*pidl1 || !**pidl1) {
      if (pidl) ILFree(pidl);
      pidl=NULL;
      break;
   }
   LPITEMIDLIST pidl2=pidl?ILCombine(**pidl1,pidl):ILClone(**pidl1);
   if (pidl) ILFree(pidl);
   pidl=pidl2;
   hItem=TreeView_GetParent(hwndTree,hItem);
}
if (pidl) {
   SHELLEXECUTEINFO execute={sizeof(execute),
      SEE_MASK_IDLIST|SEE_MASK_INVOKEIDLIST,NULL,L"properties"};
   execute.lpIDList=pidl;
   execute.nShow=SW_SHOWNORMAL;
   ShellExecuteEx(&execute);
   ILFree(pidl);
   msg->message=WM_NULL;
}