The Start button opens the same menu on every screen RetroHexChat has: the landing pages, the Connect screen, the chat, this Help viewer and the design system. What changes between them is which entries are live.
Grayed Out, Not Hidden
Entries you cannot use right now are grayed out rather than removed. Open Start ▸ Tools from the landing page and you will see Address Book, Notify List and the rest in gray — they are real parts of the app, waiting for you to connect. A grayed entry does nothing when clicked and never leads anywhere.
A whole group grays out when nothing inside it applies, but it still opens. That is the point: the menu is the same map wherever you happen to be standing on it, so you can read what the app does before you are inside it.
The Start menu carries everything the app can do. Anything offered by a menu bar at the top of a screen is offered here too — the Start menu is the complete list, and the bars are shortcuts into parts of it.
The Groups
- View — What the window in front of you is showing: toggling the conversation list and the nicklist, clearing the window, copying the selected text and finding text in it. In the Help viewer the same group switches between Contents, Index and Search.
- Tools — Address Book, Notify List, Ignore List, Highlight Words, User Lookup, URL Catcher, Channel List and Channel Central, followed by Nick Colors, Sounds and Flood Protection.
- Automation — Perform, Auto-Join, Auto Respond, Alias Editor, Custom Menus and Timers: the things that act on your behalf.
- P2P — Audio and video calls, sending a file, playing a game, connection stats, privacy mode and ending the session. Live only while you have a peer session — except the entry explaining how to start one, which is live precisely while you have none.
- Games — Retro Games, and the Arcade. The Arcade keeps scores against a nickname, so it stays gray until yours is registered and identified.
- Account — Registering and identifying your nickname, then Account, Profile, Away, User Modes, Trusted Terminals and Account Info.
- Admin — Users, Channels, Server Settings, Audit Log, MOTD, TURN, Broadcast, Danger Zone, Console and Bot Management. Live only for administrators.
- Windows — The windows of the screen you are on. Closing a window takes its taskbar button with it, the way Windows 98 did; this is how it comes back.
- Navigate — The public pages, the documentation, the design system and the way into the app, plus Back and Forward through the Help viewer's own history. These are real links, so they work with scripting off.
- Language — Every language the app speaks. Picking one keeps you on the screen you are on.
- Help — Help Topics, the shortcut cheatsheet, the Message of the Day, the source repository and its licence, and About.
Disconnect sits alone under a rule at the bottom, where Windows 98 put Shut Down.
Opening a Group
On a desktop a group flies out beside the menu; hovering another group switches to it, so at most one flyout shows at a time. On a phone the menu drills down instead: tapping a group replaces the list with its entries, and the group's own row at the top takes you back.
