Win 8 menu styles

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The more I use Win 8, the more annoying I find its menu styles (perhaps especially the often nearly-invisible scroll-blocks in the scroll bars that I have to find before I can drag them, but other things as well). Whenever I’ve set up an XP system I’ve always chosen to use the ‘Classic’ menu styles (square corners, etc.), and I haven’t had sufficient exposure to Vista and Win 7 to know whether they include such an option.

Does Win 8 (or some third-party utility) provide any way to get back to something at least more like the ‘Classic’ menu style? I had hoped that Classic Shell would include such options, but if so my minimal experimentation with it has not found them.

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There’s a list of Start button replacement utilities here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Start_Menu_replacements_for_Windows_8
Maybe some of them offer what you want.

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I believe the closest I know of is Classic Shell. Start8 does not include as many options for the Start Menu.

I do not think there is a XP exact duplicate, but then again there was not in Win 7 either.

Here are what I had/have my Start Orb set up like.

33181-ControlPanelClassicShell 33182-ControlPanelStartMenu

The options for both can be customized quite a bit. I believe Classic shell has 3 different appearance options and other subtle changes for each. Start8 does have menu customization, but I do not believe any thing like XP. (I have Start8 on this PC, Classic Shell on my wife’s PC. I will look at some various schemes and post back)

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Classic Shell has an XP Start menu option.

Jerry

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Sorry for not having been clearer: it’s not the Start Menu styles I’m talking about but the menu styles used by all applications. XP has mechanisms to control (in considerable detail) such overall menu styles (e.g., to make all menus look like Win2K or even Win98 menus rather than the newer, rounded-corner XP style), and so, for that matter, did earlier Windows versions: does Win 8 (or Vista or Win 7, just to make it clear how recently this feature may have been dropped) have anything similar?

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It seems the trend is away from those detailed mechanisms for adjustment, fewer in Win 8 compared to Win 7 and as a long time user of the Stardock suite software for that sort of customization, Win 7 is already quite a departure from the alterations possible in XP. Instead, each has it’s own particular overall style where alterations are only possible inside of that style (in other words, when finished, it still looks like Windows 7 underneath it all), with the exception of Windows 7 Classic theme which is kind of a conglomeration of the old styles, not really representing any actual classic theme, but even that is long gone in Win 8, at least my copy doesn’t have it.

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