The popular third-party Windows Start menu app ‘Classic Shell’ has been officially discontinued, the developers have however released the source code of the app to keep the project alive. The developer of the Classic Shell app announced that due to various reasons, the app is being discontinued.
The developer explains that due to lack of free time and the frequent updates to Windows operating system, it was best to discontinue the application. Each new versions of Windows break the previous version of the app, the developer explains.
“Each new version of Windows moves further away from the classic Win32 programming model, which allowed room for a lot of tinkering. The new ways things are done make it very difficult to achieve the same customizations,” the Classic Shell app developer explains.
While the developer has announced that the Classic Shell for Windows has been discontinued, it will continue to live on with help from the third-party developers as the source code has been released to SourceForge. If you are a developer, you can join the community to fork the app and keep the project alive.
“The original app won’t receive any new updates, and download links will be removed after 6 months. I am making the latest version of Classic Shell open-source and adding it back to SourceForge, where it all began. I encourage other people to fork it and go with it,” the developer added.
Classic Shell gained huge popularity back in 2012 when Microsoft announced Windows 8 operating system and ditched the iconic start menu in favor of metro-based tile interface. All good things come to an end, the Classic Shell won’t receive any new updates, and the download links will be removed after 6 months.
