Finally appeared tool that deserves all the praise, the images speak for themselves.

Click down on All Settings
Set Search box settings like here for normal functionality










Search box work on XP skin shell


Update (after tweaks with my start orb)



===================================


Homepage

Download

Enjoy in your Windows 8 CP!

All the copyright is not belong to you
</CATS>

Vistart got the job done long before that and looked better, so, whats new?

I totally agree.

Looks nice, but... redundant. VIStart exists, as well as another program specifically for Windows 8 for this very purpose.

Also, your theme could use some work. Your start button is a bit... weird, and the name text is too big.

The orb button is so much uglier than original from Windows 7...

Vi start doesn't support right-click on Mu Computer in self shell so...

There's still better alternatives. Ones that look good.

I will try it before giving out praise or dislike. Honestly it doesn't look really good. Could use work. I will try it.

I totally agree with you.

To make the start button look cooler, here is what I suggest, use the one that DBlake created for Start8, as it works perfectly for Classic Shell.
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=24118



EDIT:
Link is dead, here is the reupload:
http://yalb.ath.cx/WDP_Start_for_Start8.png

I like it. Once you enable All Settings you can change lots of stuff. Play with it and change it to the way you like it. Personally I got rid of or changed a lot before I sorta liked it.
Here is the link for Start Button from Windows 7. It works just like the one from Windows 7, which is what I prefer. Don't get me wrong I liked the DP start button, but for some reason it just didn't look right. I opened the Start Menu and it just didn't look right when using the one from the DP:
Windows 7 Start Button
Added:
Windows 8 Consumer Preview Start Button

If I'm gonna use one at all, I'll go with ViStart, because this one is ugly and I never liked the XP menu style.

There are other settings and you change it not to look like the XP menu. I don't know why Maxtorix uploaded such terrible pictures, must be what he prefers.

I post homepage, because obviously credits are not go to me

However specialty of this software is CUSTOMIZABLE almost every possible option, so after some tweaks, I get this, and from my point of view is not bad,.. is not bad at all!

Not really bad looking. Wish the Start Menu was taller. Anyway, I plan on playing around with the settings in more depth sometime soon.
Added: Here's what I finally settled on

This is much better than ViStart which can be buggy and installs junk you don't need by default. In general I don't really trust it as something I would use everyday. Classic Shell on the other hand is open source and distributed on Sourceforge meaning I can completely trust it.

Classic Shell has actually been updated for Windows 8 and offers a lot of customization. Now if only there were a way to boot straight into Explorer without having to load metro and click desktop I may actually upgrade to Windows 8. It has some nice non-metro features that I would like to use.

What are you guys talking about? Mine has always gone straight to the desktop, it isn't suppose too? Wow.

Now that looks like sex right there.

Ivo Beltchev and I started Classic Shell back in Nov. 2009 out of desperation and MS refusing to fix any issues in Windows after release. I give the ideas, test stuff and how it should work (overall User Experience) and he approves and programs them. The menu and a simple Explorer toolbar were originally created by him, so he's the developer, I was looking for exactly the same things, so I contacted him in Nov. 2009 to expand the project to support total customization and lots of more features. It reached a million downloads this month.

It supports skins, so the look can be completely changed to suit you. The trick is to customize as the defaults in all three components are simple and bare minimum. It is infinitely customizable. You just have to take time to customize it once and it will always work with future versions. You can save and restore all your settings in all three components. Classic Shell's other two components, Classic Explorer and Classic IE9 are also worth checking out, they add many missing features back to Windows taken out after XP.

We did not use the Windows orb on purpose to avoid copyright/trademark issues with the Windows logo. In case you want to add the original Windows orb back instead of the Classic Shell orb, use this image: http://i.imgur.com/9tAAy.png in the Start Menu settings -> Start button tab.



If you want a Windows 7/Windows Vista style Start Menu with a search box which is selected by default when you open the menu, go to the Search Box tab in settings and check "Selected by default" and select the "Access normally" radio button. All the settings in Classic Shell are explained with tooltip help, just hover over any setting and the tooltip help will be displayed for that setting. You can use any skin with two columns to make it work and look exactly like the Windows 7/Vista Start Menu. (For the icons, specify "none" in the icon field of the Edit item dialog for the right column of the menu) (http://i.imgur.com/lRo7g.png). The search box doesn't have file/document search, never will because they will require indexing running in the background, it only has program and Control Panel settings search.



The Classic Shell Start Menu icon size can be adjusted to make it large enough for your fingers, so you will be surprised how well it runs on a tablet too and because of its multi-column list view style of presentation, still accomodate more programs on the screen than the Start screen. And it has the search-to-launch feature too, but only for programs and settings, no indexed file searches.

Win key and click on the orb opens the menu, with Shift+Win or Shift+click you can set it to go to the Start Screen or configure it in reverse. The project was started because Windows Vista/7 did not offer the level of customization possible on Windows XP and programs like TweakUI.

This I like

I'm glad because Author of the software found this topic, and he can explain everything for it.

@xpclient:
Can you give as xml backup file for this Menu settings?


I'm sorry but I don't really understand how to make Start menu taller.

,thanks

That looks a lot better...

Way too better...