Thankfully there are handy tools out there that allow you to edit menus or even create new menus. One of those tools is 9menu. This tool is a simple command that allows you to create individual, moveable menus on your desktop that can run applications or run commands. This tool enables you to create temporary menus on your desktop to serve whatever purpose you need. Let’s take a look at how to install and use 9menu.

Installation

I will demonstrate how to install 9menu on a Ubuntu system. Although you may not find 9menu in the Ubuntu Software Center, you are able to, by default, install 9menu from the command line (or Synaptic). To install from command line do the following:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install 9menu.
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. Accept any dependencies.
5. Wait for the install to complete.

With the installation done, you are ready to begin work.

Usage

You will notice there is no entry for 9menu in the menus. That is because the usage (creation of menus) of 9menu is command line only. The standard use is:

9menu -label 'LABEL' SPACE DELINEATED LIST OF COMMANDS

Hopefully the above sample makes sense. Let’s take a look at an actual working example. Say you want to create a 9menu for the following apps: Evolution, Firefox, Empathy, and Gwibber. To do this the command would look like:

9menu -label 'Net Tools' evolution firefox empathy gwibber

Figure 1

The command above will generate a menu that looks like that in Figure 1. If you click on any of the entries show, the application will run.

Of course 9menu has plenty of options to use at the command line. There are two very nice options that are nearly “must haves” for the efficiency of 9menu:

-popdown

-teleport

The popdown option will iconify the menu as soon as one of the buttons is clicked. When iconified the menu will live in your panel where you can un-iconify it by clicking whatever key combination your desktop uses to cycle through applications.

The teleport option means that when a menu appears (either from creation or uniconifying) it will automatically appear underneath your cursor. So to use both of the above commands with our sample it would look like:

9menu -popdown -teleport -label 'Net Tools' evolution firefox empathy gwibber

I like to run the 9menu command from the run dialog (click Alt-F2 to open this) so I don’t have a terminal window open. If you would rather run it from the command line, add the & at the end of the command so you will be returned to your command prompt. You can then exit out of your terminal if you like.

Final thoughts

The ways to transform, configure, or make efficient the Linux desktop seem to be limitless. The 9menu tool adds yet another level of efficiency to your desktop, quickly and easily.

Internet Explorer 9 Beta has several of those changes. One of them is that the menu bar is hidden by default. The menu bar contains the File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools and Help menu items which have been part of the Internet Explorer ever since it was introduced.

Thankfully though, there is an option to display the bar temporarily by pressing the Alt key on the computer keyboard.

internet explorer 9 menu

The menu bar that is displayed this way is only temporarily visible (it disappears after the next click or if the browser window is out of focus) and below the other header controls.

In Internet Explorer 8 and earlier, it was always visible and on top of all controls in the header.

There is no option in the browser to change the appearance of the menu bar. Options are available on the other hand in the Windows Registry.

Making the menu bar visible all the time in IE9

If you are working a lot with the menu bar, then you may want to speed that up a little. Instead of having to press ALT every time a menu bar item needs to be selected, it may be better to always display it instead in the header.

Open the Windows Registry editor with the keyboard shortcut Windows-R, typing regedit and enter on the keyboard.

Navigate to the following Registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

If Internet Explorer does not exist, create it by right-clicking on Microsoft and selecting New > Key from the context menu. Name that key Internet Explorer.

Now perform the same operation on Internet Explorer. Right-click the Registry key and select New > Key from the menu. Name that key Main.

Now right-click on the Main key and select New > Dword (32-Bit) Value and name it AlwaysShowMenus. Finally, double-click on the new parameter and set its value to 1. Setting it to 1 makes the menu bar in Internet Explorer 9 visible all the time. To revert the change, set it to 0 at anytime.

ie9 alwaysshowmenus

The change takes effect on the next start of the operating system. It is alternatively possible to kill the explorer.exe process and start it again in the Task Manager.

The change was immediately visible in the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer 9. In the 64-bit version we had to press Alt once to display the bar. From that moment on it stayed visible.

How to move the Menu Bar to the top

With the previous tweak, the menu bar is shown all the time. It still sits below other browser controls in the header. If you want to move it to the top of the browser, do the following:

Locate the Windows Registry key

KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser

Right-click that key and select New > Dword (32-bit) Value from the context menu. Name the new parameter ITBar7Position and give it the value 1.

Both Toolbar and WebBrowser did not exist on our Windows 7 Professional test system. Simply right-click on the parent key and select New > Key to create them.

menu on top

The changes once again become visible on the restart of the browser.

To revert the change, set the value of the parameter to 0.

Microsoft definitely should have made it easier for users to change the location of items in the Internet Explorer 9 header. It is simply not understandable why they did not add an option to drag and drop items around, and display them using the right-click menu or the options of the Internet browser. Yes, some options are available but those are not sufficient, at least not for us power users.

What’s your take on this?

Previously I had used a whole combination of toolbars and application launchers so it was a welcome change to remove some of this clutter.

One of the notable alternatives to pop up was the Vista Start Menu, a replacement for both the XP and Vista menus. Developer Dennis Nazarenko created it becuase he says:

“I have always found the Start Menu in Windows to be inconvenient to use. In the new Windows Vista it’s been made more attractive but more inconvenient than even before!”

His replacement is definitely a more useful option for XP but I would never recommend using it in Vista, it would be somewhat of a step backwards.

In fact you can actually get the Vista Start Menu in XP, thanks to the Vista Start Menu Emulator by Folgelsoft. It is a completely accurate version of the Vista start menu for XP, and I think it’s very impressive. In fact I on my XP computer I love using this application as it functions almost identically to the real thing and is a dead ringer looks-wise.

The performance is also impressive, no lag or slow down compared to the default menu and it loads very fast on the initial login. The integrated search is almost instant, and better in some ways then Vista, but that’s becuase the VSME only searches the shortcuts within the menu itself. Vista indexes the entire system.

So if you want to give the new start menu a try without upgrading then this is how you can do it. Admittedly it looks a bit funny when used with the Luna theme as it’s black and transparent, but you can always skin your desktop to match.

Update: The Vista Start Menu Emulator homepage is no longer available. We have uploaded the last public version of the software program to our servers. You can download it here: Vista Start Menu Emulator (41)

You are free to create new folders, sub menus and separators and fill them with the content that FileMenu Tools offers. New options vary from the very useful Command Line From Here option which opens the command line window from the selected folder. You may also run a selected program with parameters (defrag or anti-virus for example) and perform many operations such as copy path, move to, advanced delete and advanced renamer.

Besides that you can edit the Send To dialog which I personally rarely use. You can disable current options and add new ones with ease. One application could be to move files to a special data folder once they have been downloaded and checked. There are certainly other and better options but this is just to show that adding new send to entries can be useful.