Winstep Nexus Dock v15.9 Released!
Thursday, October 1, 2015 by JcRabbit | Discussion: OS Customization
The Winstep Nexus dock is a FREE dock for Windows. Every feature you’d expect from a dock, including widgets, mouse-over effects, skins, drag-and-drop, and many others not available in most other docks, such as live icon reflections, in-dock system tray, blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, with thousands of different backgrounds freely available online, Nexus is fully compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.
Supported Languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Farsi (Persian), Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brasil), Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish.
Nexus runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 8.x and Windows 10.
v15.9 is a monster release, with hundreds of changes and additions. Focus was on adding missing key functionality as well as, of course, some new eye-candy.
What's New? Highlighted Features:
- Speed! Due to new and improved activation and hide delay timings, Nexus simply feels a lot more responsive. Rendering performance when shifting icons in a fully expanded Shelf to make room for a new shortcut is now also an order of magnitude faster (Nexus Ultimate only).
- Improved Windows 10 integration.
- Now fully high-DPI aware. Throw anything at it from 100% to 200% scaling and everything will still work and look as it should. New settings added to control the scaling of menus and the Shelf on high DPI systems.
- Added support for systems with multiple input languages: new 'Language Bar' internal command can be placed anywhere and emulates the functionality of the Windows language bar.
- New optional Edge Swipe activation mechanism.
- Shortcuts in the dock now double up as running application icons, so there is no duplication of icons when running applications are being displayed in the dock.
- Shelf now smoothly resizes when double clicking a tab header to fully expand the Shelf in order to show all the contents of that tab at once (Nexus Ultimate only).
- Weather module now automatically retrieves the user's location when running for the first time. Also added new 'Get My Location' button in the Weather settings panel.
- New Smoke mouseover/launch/attention effect. Not too intrusive and makes the dock look like it's on fire! My new personal favorite when combined with the magnify effect.
- Added support for RKLauncher dock skins.
- New option to colorize themes based on the dominant color of the current desktop background.
- Explosion animation shown when an item is deleted or removed is now user-customizable.
- New optional Windows 10 style for some UI elements, specifically designed so the application blends in with the new Windows version. Automatically enabled on Windows 10 systems.
- Added new 'Action Center' internal command (Windows 10 only).
- Clicking the clock module now shows the Windows calendar instead of the Regional Settings dialog (Windows 7 onwards).
- Font size in the User Interface is now automatically decreased when a non-English language is selected to better accomodate the (usually) longer translations.
- ... many other performance and stability improvements!
More Information:
Winstep Web Site:
http://www.winstep.net
More information about Winstep Xtreme:
http://www.winstep.net/xtreme.asp
More information about the Winstep Nexus dock:
http://www.winstep.net/nexus.asp
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Reply #82 Monday, November 9, 2015 4:54 PM
Still working on that Theme Mangler... 
Almost there for the alpha.
Reply #86 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 10:14 AM
Is it possible to hide both the task bar and the work shelf (big guy at the bottom) so that any window or app I open takes up the full screen?
Reply #87 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:06 PM
Yes. You can set both the taskbar and the Shelf to auto-hide and you can set the Shelf to hide the tabs too (Shelf Properties -> Behavior tab -> More Options -> Hide tabs when the shelf is collapsed)
Reply #88 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:37 PM
Nice! I was fooling around with preferences and somehow managed to separate Winstep from the task bar (don't ask.Lol). After a reboot I have the WB start menu and the workshelf, best of both worlds. And being able to hide the tabs is a plus. So far I'm liking it. 
Edit:
Oops! I hid the workshelf tabs. Now when I bump the bottom of my screen only the start menu appears, no workshelf. What I done? 
Reply #89 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 12:51 PM
Press CTRL+F11 to open WorkShelf Preferences -> Docks & Shelves -> Select the Shelf -> Properties button to open the Shelf Properties dialog -> Behavior tab -> Enable 'Activate Shelf by bumping the screen edge with the mouse pointer'
Reply #90 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 1:07 PM
I got that part working but now no WB start menu. I don't remember what I did. Lol
Reply #91 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 1:16 PM
Alzheimers ain't my specialty. 
What do you want? You want to keep the NextSTART/Winstep taskbar or you prefer the Windows taskbar?
If the former, you can add a Quick Launch button to run the 'Show Start Menu' internal command, which will show the Windows/WB Start menu. Or you can right click the Start Button in the NextSTART/Winstep Taskbar and select 'Associate to Windows Start Menu', which will make it open the Windows Start Menu instead of the main NextSTART menu.
If you want the latter, open NextSTART Preferences, go to the Taskbar tab and unselect 'Allow NextSTART to replace the Windows taskbar'. You can even keep the two taskbars visible at the same time if that is your thing. 
Reply #92 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 1:22 PM
Look, Winstep Xtreme is extremely (pardon the pun) powerful, so there is a lot to learn if you want to use it past the basics. You can play with it at will safe in the knowledge that if you run into trouble you can always reset everything to installation defaults in NextSTART Preferences -> Advanced -> Troubleshooting Options -> Reset Everything. Same for WorkShelf.
If in the mean time you run into a configuration you like but you want to keep on experimenting with it, you can always backup your settings in the General tab of Preferences first. Just keep in mind WorkShelf settings are independent from NextSTART's, so you will have to back them up once for each application.
Reply #93 Tuesday, November 10, 2015 1:53 PM
If I don't play around how will I learn? Thanks for all your help Jc.
Edit: Got them both working. I opened workshelf preferences and unchecked hide windows taskbar. That's probably what I did, I checked it.
Reply #99 Thursday, November 12, 2015 6:35 PM
You think right.
Now, first and foremost: this isn't even a beta, it's an alpha.
By that I mean that many things still don't work. This is for you guys to *play with* and let me know what you think, not to actually start making themes yet.
In fact, the only thing 'working' there are the panels for Nexus skinning. All the panels for other objects (Shelf, Menus, modules, etc...) will be blank. However you will find that most of the stuff in the Nexus skinning panels is already working, so it should give you a feel for how the rest will work too and how everything ties together.
If it's not intuitive, please let me know.
In theory you can already use the Theme Builder to make Nexus themes. You can also use it to automatically convert non-native Winstep dock themes to the Winstep format (provided those 3rd party themes are already available to Nexus).
When you run the Builder, turn on your speakers (but first make sure nobody is sound asleep on your household lol) - it's a little homage I made to those old 90's machine code PC demos, if you remember those. 
Anyway, I'll shut up now and go make a setup program. Be back in a little while.
Reply #100 Thursday, November 12, 2015 6:50 PM
Ok, you can now download the Winstep Theme Builder from here.
Unzip and run setup. Don't forget it must be installed on top of an existing Nexus, Nexus Ultimate or Winstep Xtreme installation.
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Reply #81 Monday, November 9, 2015 4:36 PM
Semantics......semantics......
OK, don't go getting all Xtreme on me!!!