Overview

A brief introduction to CustomMenu.

CustomMenu allows you to build your perfect custom menu, accessible by right-clicking on your Windows desktop. All your favorite programs, files and Windows functions at your fingertips.

You can create an unlimited number of menu items, and an unlimited number of submenus which themselves have an unlimited number of menu items and submenus. Right from the start this a major improvement over the standard Windows desktop menu which only allows one level of submenus, and those submenus are limited to just 16 menu items.

Right-clicking on any menu will open the CustomMenu Configuration ("Config") window. This window is rich in functionality to make building your menu, selecting the required command files, and assigning icons, an absolute pleasure.

The config window supports full drag-and-drop from Windows Explorer. Any number of files can be dropped on the menu tree on the left and CustomMenu will create a menu item for each one. As well as executables, you can drag and drop shortcuts onto the Config window and CustomMenu will extract the details and automatically fill in the edit boxes for you.

You can also drag and drop files and folders onto the Icon File, Command and Directory edit boxes.

CustomMenu comes with it's own Icon Explorer which allows you to browse your entire computer for files which contain icons that you can make use of; for example "shell32.dll" in the Windows\Sytem32 folder.

You can even browse folders and, if you wish, subfolders, direct from your desktop, with options to limit what types of files are displayed in the submenus.

For example, here is a Downloads folder, limited to showing only *.pdf files and no subfolders:

Alternatively, you can include subfolders and CustomMenu will become a live disk-browsing facility, with a submenu for every subfolder it finds:

You can even browse an entire drive direct from your desktop:

There is no limit to the number of menu items, submenus or submenu items you can have. However, if a submenu has more than 40 items in it, CustomMenu will automatically provide scroll buttons at the bottom of the submenu. Although these buttons can be clicked, if you hover your mouse cursor over either of the buttons, CustomMenu will auto-scroll the submenu. Alternatively, you can use the mouse wheel to quickly scroll up and down the submenu:

CustomMenu provides a wealth (literally hundreds) of Windows settings, Control Panel applets, Shell commands, etc. at your fingertips, with numerous categories from which to quickly select and create a menu item:

While customizing your menu in the Config window, and having saved any changes, you can test your menu directly from the Config window by clicking the "Show Menu" button. The fully-working menu will display alongside the Config window:

Having created your custom menu you can, if you wish, replace the static part of the normal Windows desktop context menu with your custom menu by clicking the "Write to Desktop Menu" button. A backup .reg file of you current desktop menu will be created first.

Windows will still add its own context-sensitive items and any other context items that you have registered. But the top of the menu will be your custom menu.

Your custom menu will be displayed whenever you right-click anywhere on the desktop. The Windows desktop menu can still be accessed at any time, holding down a CTRL key and right-clicking the desktop. Also, when the CustomMenu config window is open, a right-click on the desktop will show the Windows desktop menu.

Hopefully, this quick overview has given you a taste for what CustomMenu can achieve. Version 0.9 (pre-release) is in the final testing stage and will be release shortly for you to try out and provide feedback.

Exciting times!