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johnlgalt Posts: 1
1 days ago
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Hi, everyone, glad to be a part of the community. @Gianluca, thank you for this wonderful system that I've long overlooked. I have a whole slew of programs that I use in portable form, and I've simply, for many years, kept them in a dedicated folder in a separate drive that I could access. I've slowly but surely started integrating my collection into a SyMenu that works well.
I have a couple of questions, and in searching the forums, I've seen some answers, but I'm still a bit confused (or simply don't have enough information).
First, I'm using Version 8.09.9363 [2025.08.20] (Zip) installed on latest Windows 11 24H2 (OS Build 26100.4946). I have it extracted to its own folder in the same area where all my other portable apps are located (E:\Programs\).
First question: I saw the various posts and such regarding Windows (Microsoft) Store apps and the plugin you had developed. And I notice that I am currently unable to add Store apps, even if I use a shortcut and / or symlink. Not a big deal, as I can easily use the native start menu for any of those apps, but is this the end of any attempt to load Store apps (aka Metro apps) from SysMenu (not a criticism, genuine question - other applications I've tried to use, such as TaskBarGroups and a newer one called AppGroup, were great for allowing multiple little menus for different groups, but then resulted in 15, 20 individual icons on the taskbar that cluttered it up badly - but both worked with Metro apps without issue)
Second question - I saw another thread about how you made the beta v8 to test Windows rendering wrt scaling. My issue is that, while my SyMenu scales really, really well, the config and Option boxes are not scaling, and the text is tiny.
  
My monitors are 27 inch 4k displays, and at 0 scaling everything is entirely tiny, so I use Windows' native 150% scaling. Additionally, I have Windows *Text* scaling set to normal, but in apps like my browser, I use 125% to 150% scaling as well. The above renders make it look rather readable, but in reality, the actual size on my monitor is half what it looks like above. Here is an image of the actual options widow overlaid with the images I posted above:
As you can see, it gets quite small.
I've tried both enabling and disabling the HD monitors check box, as well as tried manipulating the DPI Scaling of the symenu.exe (from properties) to no avail.
What am I missing?
edited by johnlgalt on 22/08/2025
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1334
1 days ago
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Hi johnlgalt and welcome to the community.
1) SyMenu and Metro apps
When I tried to include the apps in SyMenu, I crashed against a wall: Microsoft doesn't offer a complete API to interact with those apps.
I'm not talking about the option to create an app by scratch that is a well supported process, but to interact with already installed apps.
The only way to accomplish it was by querying the Windows Registry, which is not the most ideal method because you have to reverse-engineer it since, again, Microsoft hasn't published any documentation and it can change over time. Well, IMHO it's a sort of "protection" to prevent someone from creating a better way to interact with Metro apps than the Start menu. A really short-sighted policy.
The authors of the programs able to do that simply use the registry directly, follow its eventual future changes, and are willing to reach the target step by step, gradually discovering how it works.
Well, if in the meantime MS publishes a complete API to interact with Metro apps, please let me know and maybe I can reopen the project to include them in SyMenu.
2) The painful scaling problem
I worked on it for months, literally, and never found a catch-all solution.
Above all, on 4K monitors, my advice is to flag the checkbox for issues on HD monitors and not mess with special zoom, DPI, compatibility, or other graphical settings for SyMenu. This way, when you restart SyMenu, the program will take the normal settings for your desktop.
If you set a 150% scaling (which is probably a good choice for a 27" monitor), SyMenu will be zoomed by 50% and should be visible like any other program on your PC. The only problem with this workaround (because it's not a solution... thanks MS) is that the program will be a bit blurry because the scale is obtained with a graphical zoom, the same effect you get by doubling a picture's size. This way, the details degrade, resulting in that strange blur effect.
I hope everything is clearer now.
edited by Gianluca on 23/08/2025
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