Welcome to Classic Shell: Classic Start Menu and Classic Explorer functions for Windows 7
Posted by jpluimers on 2009/12/31
One of the things in usability is to enable old skoop people that have been using.
Windows 7 went even further than Windows Vista into changing start menu functionality and explorer functionality that had been there since Windows 95.
So things that have been working for over a decade, suddenly stopped to work, or worse: work differently.
Would you imagine what happened when someone reordered the pedals in a car (from left to right are clutch, brake and throttle) or reassign their functionality?
So some people gathered and wrote Classic Shell.
Now someone please restrore the “backspace” keyboard behaviour back to “go one level up in the folder tree” as it had been for more than a decade…
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 
xpclient said
Classic Shell has an option to assign Backspace (or any custom key of choice) as an additional shortcut besides Alt+Up for going Up One Level.
jpluimers said
Thanks!
–jeroen
IL said
Yes, I feel Backspace on my Win7 behaves as always: it opes directory one level up. But no! It behaves like Alt-Left or “go back” and returns you to previous location. Of course, if you descend from the upper directory then it equals to previous directory. Anyway, Alt-Up does what you want.
jpluimers said
Now someone who retro-fits this new Alt-Up behaviour in Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP, 2000 and before…
But thanks for the tip, now I know the alternative in Windows Vista and up…
–jeroen