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| The cascading menus accessed via the Start button are a slick Windows' feature - except
for one thing. When you open the main Start menu, there are, as you would expect, horizontal
divider lines separating the different alphabetical groups. However, if you then open
the Programs' submenu, or the Accessories' sub-submenu, there is no similar divider line to
help you discern where one alphabetical list is ending and the next one is beginning. |
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| There is no fix for this anomaly in Microsoft Windows, not even in Windows XP nor Vista.
For that reason, we devised our own method for applying separator bars. This can be seen
in operation in Fig 1 right, and in Figs 2b & 3 below. |
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| The illustrated separator bar is available to anybody who would like to bring their own
menus up to the same standard. The divider line can be applied easily to any PC running
Windows 98 through to XP & Vista, provided Windows is installed on the C: drive (which would
be the norm). |
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Continue by left-clicking on the zip file below to start the download process, and save
it, without opening, to your desktop. The zip file is only 3KB in size. When downloaded,
right-click on the file and, if available, choose the 'Extract Here' option for automatic unzipping
direct to the desktop. If not available, look for an 'Extract...', 'Extract to...' or
'Extract All' option and choose that. With any of those three, at the 'Extract to' field,
ensure the path to the desktop is the destination and, if any word appears after '\Desktop',
delete it. Then you will find the following on your desktop...
Two yellow folders, one called Dividers and the other called Instructions.
Open the latter and follow the simple method which is inside. In little more than a minute
from now, you will have the divider lines in place on your own Programs and Accessories menus,
and looking every bit as effective as those you have seen in Figs 1 & 3. |
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| Fig 1 (below) This screengrab below shows an XP system with the Start Menu
opened and the cascaded Programs' submenu also open. You can see that the Start Menu includes,
as standard, on the left, two horizontal divider bars. These are separating three different,
alphabetical sections. But, on the Programs' submenu, the required divider you can see
below, on the right, separating the two alphabetical sections, will not be there on your own
machine unless you apply the fix on this page. |
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