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| The cascading menus accessed via the Start button are one of Windows' slickest features - 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 separator bar method ©. This can be seen in operation in Fig 1 right, and in Figs 2b & 3 below. This separator bar is available to anybody who would like to upgrade their own menus to the same standard.
Start by downloading the small zip file from this page. The download does not contain a program or other harmful code so it is completely safe to proceed. |
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| 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 or a C: partition (either of which would be the norm). |
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| The zip file is only 3KB in size, making it one of the smallest and fastest downloads of
its type anywhere on the internet. |
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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. 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, provided you are using a good unzipper, you will find the following on your desktop:-
TWO new items - a yellow folder called Dividers and a yellow folder 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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