Replacing the Start Menu

Question

I want to make my own Start Menu replacement and I am trying to figure out what approach to use. There are a number of ways the Start Menu is activated: click on it, hit windows key, hit Ctrl+Esc keys or tab until it gets focus and hit the space or enter key.

I know enough about win32 to do each one of these separately and I could figure it out with Spy++. I'd really like to know if there is an easier way through and I can't find any helpful articles.

I'd like to do this for XP and Vista/Windows 7.

Answer 1

I guess that you would have to inject yourself into the explorer.exe process (There can be more than one, but you want the one that has the "Shell_TrayWnd" window) and subclass the taskbar or one of its children to catch/eat the message that brings up the startmenu and instead, show your own window.