Windows development veteran Dave Plummer recently took to Twitter/X to reveal the story behind the Windows NT Start Menu branding banner. As with many of Plummer’s tales, there are exciting insights and surprises to absorb. One of the significant revelations about this iconic Start Menu is that Plummer worked to “render it live” rather than rely on bitmaps. That’s quite a modern way of doing things, and Plummer shared his reasoning, and we learned the pros and cons behind his choice.
Plummer notes that he was still a Windows rookie when he was tasked with contributing to the code for the Windows NT Start Menu. As quite a few versions of Windows NT required corresponding banner texts, he wanted to eliminate the creation of a multitude of bitmap options and render the text and background gradient live per SKU.
