The Start menu is a user interface element used in Microsoft Windows operating systems since Windows 95 and in some X window managers. It provides a central launching point for application and tasks. Depending on the operating system or window manager, the menu might have different names, such as Kickoff Application Launcher in KDE, Start screen in Windows 8 or LX Panel in LXDE.
Traditionally, the Start menu provided a customizable nested list of programs for the user to launch, as well as a list of most recently opened documents, a way to find files and get help, and access to the system settings. Later enhancements via Windows Desktop Update included access to special folders like "My Documents" and "Favorites" (browser bookmarks). Windows XP's Start menu was expanded to encompass various My Documents folders (including My Music and My Pictures), and transplanted other items like My Computer and My Network Places from the Windows desktop. Until Windows Vista, the Start menu was constantly expanded across the screen as the user navigated through its cascading sub-menus. As of Windows Vista, the Start menu covers a fixed portion of the screen. As of Windows Server 2012, the Start menu (known as "Start screen") covers the entire screen.
Read more about Start Menu: Microsoft Windows, Linux
Famous quotes containing the words start and/or menu:
“The East is marvellously interesting for tracing our steps back. But for going forward, it is nothing. All it can hope for is to be fertilised by Europe, so that it can start on a new phase.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“...what a thing it is to lie there all day in the fine breeze, with the pine needles dropping on one, only to return to the hotel at night so hungry that the dinner, however homely, is a fete, and the menu finer reading than the best poetry in the world! Yet we are to leave all this for the glare and blaze of Nice and Monte Carlo; which is proof enough that one cannot become really acclimated to happiness.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)