The height of the start menu is controlled mainly by how many items you have on the start menu, editing the skin would not make that much difference if you have a lot of items on your start menu.

Note that you may need to decrease the number of items on the right side as well as the number of pinned or recently opened programs shown on the left side to get it as short as you want. You may also try switching to small icons for further size reduction. (I like my start menu short as well.)

In those shots, small startpanel icons are being used. That would also make a difference.

I realize about the small icons, the only thing I have on my start menu is computer and control panel and still the start menu is larger.

Lightstar, Hoosier? If you mean from Indiana, no sorry. I'm close though, Illinois

Yes, Radiate is a great wb! Looks good on Vista, too. Just trying to figure out how to get my start menu that short. I'll ask the publisher of that SS as well.

maybe the short start menus are a windows 7 thing.

i edit the skin in skinstudio and it shows that the start menu looks small and I save it as a substyle. when i apply it, looks the same as if i hadn't resized it. tried reloading wb as well.

i have no programs listed on left side. Here is a pic of my desktop. I've even resized the program list image and the place list image in skinstudio. It shows that the menu is much shorter in skinstudio and I saved it as a sub-style, but it doesn't change what you see below once I reapply the skin after editing.

http://i873.photobucket.com/albums/ab299/mzgaz/stuff/DESKTOPFORUM.jpg

Open SKS and edit the text margins for the places side...the bottom one will need to be a negative number. Its a Vista/7 bug.

Yes, just keep lowering the text margin on the right (places panel) side until you get what you want, even if you go into negative numbers.

Make sure the amount of recently used programs to be displayed is set to 0.(and clear the list)  see if that helps.

SKS being the free version shouldnt affect this...but I've never used it so I cant swear.

I emailed Chasbo and asked him how he did it. He just has to do "properties" on the startmenu. He has W7, I have vista. Must be the difference, darn. I'm still hoping to find a way in SKS to do it. When I was on XP I substyled compact menus (horizontally) all the time, but I guess things change and I have to learn all over again. Thank you everyone for trying to help me out!

Yep, you cannot shorten the height of the start menu much in Vista, it will always be taller no matter what.  All this time I thought you were talking about Windows 7.

Sorry about that LightStar.

Wizard, don't really care for having any icons on my desktop except the ones in my sidebar and i like the compact look of a short menu.