Open Menu+ is an open source and free alternative to the Windows® Start Menu. A Vista / Mac Spotlight style quick search let's you use Vista Start Menu and Mac Spotlight features on XP, which allows you to quickly find the application or file you need. It can appear next to the Start Menu to help you get familiarized with it before completely switching over. For Tablet PC users, Open Menu+ can open with a mouse-over, without having to click on the Start Button. Softpedia guarantees that Open Menu+ is 100% free of spyware and adware! Best of all, it's completely free!
Requires Windows® XP, or Vista
Open Menu+ Demo
Finding "Disk Defragmenter" with and without Open Menu+
This video compares finding Disk Defragmenter using the regular Start Menu, then Open Menu+. As you can see, using Open Menu+ helps you find it much faster. It also remembers what you previously opened, so you can quickly access it again.
Open Menu+ Portable is an open source portable application launcher. It has all the features and functionality of Open Menu+, with the addition of being a portable apps launcher. You can use a Windows Vista / Mac Spotlight style quick search to find the application or file you're looking for, even on your flash drive! You can use it to launch any portable applications you have on your flash drive.
This article contains the results of the popular Acid tests to test CSS standards compliance on the most popular web browsers used today. These tests were performed on clean installations, and the results were not tampered or altered in any way. The operating systems used to perform these test were Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard, and Knoppix 5.1 with KDE 3.5.5. The browsers which were tested were Firefox 2.0.0.12, Firefox 3.0b2, Firefox 3.0b3, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Konqueror 3.5.5, Opera 9.26, Opera 9.5 Beta 1, Safari 3.0.4, and Safari 3.0.4-5523.15. The results are ordered based on their Acid 3 score.
SciActive is going to begin developing a new, open source shell replacement for Windows called Oyster Shell. If you don't know what a shell is let me explain...
When you login to your user account on Windows, it loads the default shell which is called Explorer. This program creates desktop icons, a taskbar, and a Start Menu. It provides several ways to launch applications and switch between open applications. This is essentially what a Windows shell is.
Anyone who has an idea on how to make the process of launching and switching between applications easier or more efficient can write a new shell. This is what we plan to do. So you might be wondering what will make Oyster Shell better than Explorer...
Oyster Shell will not use the Start Menu. It will use a customized release of Open Menu+ called Oyster Menu. This menu will be launched by bringing your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen.
Oyster Shell will not use a taskbar to show open windows. Instead it will use a hidden bar that will pop up when you bring the mouse down to the bottom right corner of the screen. This will show the system tray icons and clock as well.
Oyster Shell will not use a standard desktop. Instead of having your desktop be below every open window, it will be hidden and appear when you bring your mouse to the top left corner of the screen.
The desktop will also be divided into two sections, the user desktop, and the common desktop. This allows the user more control over their own desktop.
Since the top right corner of the screen is where the minimize, maximize and close buttons are, this corner will not have a pop up associated with it.
This pop up style configuration will allow the user to maximize the use of the entire screen. Every bit of screen real estate can be used to display the entire active window.
This will be a very big project and any help would be appreciated. Please contact us if you would be willing to contribute in any of the following: graphic design, developing, testing, translating, donating, or anything else.
