Win-10-1909 start menu alphabet heading removal

dalchina said:

Those are meant, as I guess you know, to give you a quick way to jump to different parts of the start menu (e.g. click B, box opens, click any letter e.g. X to jump). The start menu isn't particularly configurable, and relatively easy to break it seems. You might prefer to consider a start menu replacement.

Yes, but that just seems pointless because even as far back as Win-XP, Win-98, one could hit a letter of the alphabet for a program folder or program shortcut and the highlight would be positioned at the first match anyway, so all that the alphabetic letter headers in Win-10 are doing is just needlessly taking up vertical space preventing display of a denser list and also making the start menu uglier.

dalchina said:

As I suggested, consider using a 3rd party start menu that is far more configurable and usable.. many here use Open Shell (the continuing development of Classic Shell, no longer developed) - free. That fully supports drag 'n drop, deeply nested large start menus, useful right click options, configurable search, skins and appearance.

Yes, I'm aware of Classic Shell / Open Shell before I got into Win-10, though if possible I was hoping to resolve the problem within Win-10 itself if I could help it. Even on Win-XP / Win-7, I switch the start menu back to classic mode anyway, which, on Win-XP is like Win-98 and on Win-7 is their most resource saving type start menu. It's too bad that Win-7's class mode is not the same as Win-XP's classic mode. I hate having to click an extra click on ALL PROGRAMS in Win-7 to get to program group folders.

Speaking of Windows user interfaces, I was wondering if you or anyone else know of a way to modify (even if via Windows registry) a particular Windows Explorer behaviour I found annoying since Win-Vista / Win-7 and this continues on Win-10. Specifically, in Win-XP's Windows Explorer, when I use up / down cursor keys to move highlight bar to a particular folder, that folder's contents is immediately displayed on the Windows Explorer right pane. Whereas in Win-7 and Win-10, moving the folder highlight on the left / folder pane does NOT immediately result in that folder's contents being displayed. The user has to HIT ENTER on the folder before that change occurs. I'd love to have the immediate folder content display back in Explorer when the left pane highlight is moved up and down via cursor keys, but not sure that this modification is even possible. It's far more annoying to have to hit enter key first.

dalchina said:

That's not obvious, unfortunately = may not be possible. But it is the default behaviour in e.g. XYplorer...

I'm pleased to say that in fact Open Shell / Classic Shell developers truly have thought of everything. This feature IS available (in the latest release of Open Shell) but not immediately obvious in configuration of Open/Classic Explorer modes. The setting is actually under NAVIGATION PANE tab, under AUTO NAVIGATE TO THE FOLDER, set to WHEN USING THE KEYBOARD mode. This is a very important feature at least in the way I frequently use Windows Explorer when on Win-XP to check folder contents when I have a large number of folders, just use keyboard cursor up / down keys to move the highlight to the desired folder on the left pane, and that currently highlighted folder's contents is immediately displayed on the right pane, without having to hit enter key which is a real pain in the neck.