Winstep Xtreme Changelog

What's new in Winstep Xtreme 23.11

Dec 8, 2023

Added partial Danish translation.
Updated Spanish language file.
Updated Czech language file, updated language name to Èeština.
Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file.
Updated Portuguese language file.
Added new 'Reset Reserved Screen Areas" Internal Command. This will reset any areas reserved for the NextSTART taskbar and WorkShelf shelves, docks, etc - useful when Windows gets confused about areas of the screen that should not be covered by maximized windows. It will also reset any multi-monitor and per-monitor tasklists.
The 'Renew Now' button will now also appear on the About tab of Preferences if the user's upgrade subscription has expired and he is running a version that no longer works with his current license key.
Added all the Windows 10/11 Start button right click menu options to the contexct menu of a 'Start Menu' internal command.
Added new 'Use Legacy Mode' setting, disabled by default, to the CPU Module settings dialog.
If running on Windows 8 or above and 'Use Legacy Mode' is NOT enabled, the total CPU usage percentage displayed on the CPU Meter is now the same as that displayed on the Task Manager of Windows 8 onwards.
System Interrupts is now also included in the list of processes and their CPU usage.
Added "Check Service Communication" option to the Troubleshooting Options dialog. Verifies that the Winstep service required to perform actions that require admin privileges (such as installing a theme font) is operating properly.
All Windows Settings internal commands now have individual icons instead of all sharing the same icon.
Added new 'Settings' tab type, displaying all the Windows 10 and 11 Settings categories.
Under Windows 10 and 11 the default shelf now has a Settings tab instead of a Quick Launch tab.
Changed the wording of the uninstall survey.
Added support for per-monitor tasklists: docks, shelves, drawers and even grid-stacks showing a list of running applications can now show windows open on all monitors or only windows open on the current monitor.
Added global setting 'When using multiple monitors, show running applications on..." to the Tasks tab in Preferences with the following three options: "All tasklists", "Main tasklist and tasklist where window is open" and "Tasklist where window is open".
Double clicking a folder in a Shelf tab or Drawer set to open folders as Grid Stacks will now open that folder in Explorer.
Added ".webp" to the list of default thumbnail file types.
Windows 11: The Search dialog (invoked via the Search internal command) should now pop up next to the mouse pointer.
Text in the balloon tooltip of Wanda and the Lookup IP Address internal command can now be copied to the Windows clipboard by left clicking the balloon tooltip itself (just not the close button).
Live preview thumbnails (for running applications) now fade out when clicked on.
Added new 'Media Mute' internal command, toggles the mute state of audio being played.
'Check Internet Connection' in the Troubleshooting Options dialog box now also checks to see if HTTPS connections have been silently disabled due to previous crashes (caused by Acronis Active Protection injecting code into 3rd party processes) and offers the option to re-enable them if so.
GEO IP feature that retrieves current location based on IP address is now performed through secure HTTPS connections as required by the GEO IP data provider.
Added 'Allow Multiple Instances' setting to the Item Properties dialog of 'Run Program' item types. Allows launching multiple instances of the same application without having to press SHIFT or double-click even if 'Do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' is active.
Added work-around to display correct "Legacy" total CPU Usage under Windows 11 22H2 onwards (Microsoft introduced a bug in this Windows release that broke all CPU usage reporting tools, including Windows own Task Manager under the Details tab, and to this date has not fixed it yet).
Added system-wide fix for incorrect CPU usage reporting on Windows 11 22H2 systems to the CPU Meter settings dialog. This will fix incorrect per process CPU usage both in the Winstep application as well as 3rd party applications (such as the Details tab of Windows own Task Manager). This is accomplished by setting the REG_DWORD value SerializeTimerExpiration to 2 (off) under the key "HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerKernel" (note that changing this value requires a reboot for the new setting to take effect). Technical information about SerializeTimerExpiration can be found in page 160 of Windows Internals, Part 2, 7th Edition. WARNING: this value should NOT be set to OFF on systems that support Modern Standby (issue powercfg /AVAILABLESLEEPSTATES on CMD and make sure "S0 Low Power Idle" is NOT supported, this said the Winstep application should automatically disable the option to change this setting on systems that do support Modern Standby).
Added new 'All Events' setting to the battery monitor module. Provided logging is turned on, this makes the module log power events such as monitor turning off, monitor dimming, monitor turning on, system shutting down, system entering or coming back from low power states, even when not on battery.
Added 'Troubleshoot License Key Issues' button to the Troubleshooting Options dialog box.
Improved handling of multi-monitor profiles and changes in screen resolution.
The currently selected item was not updating itself correctly when creating a new shelf or drawer in the 'Dock and Shelf Management' tab of Preferences.
The icon cache was not being destroyed as it should when modifying a shelf or drawer via the Shelf Properties dialog.
Several misc.issues when editing and modifying shelf tabs via the Shelf Properties dialog.
Wanda would stop swiming on the desktop after returning from sleep or hibernation.
The 'Send to WorkShelf' dialog would crash the application when selecting a Grid Stack, a Drawer or a Shelf with no Regular tabs.
Only Grid Stacks and Drawers with Regular tabs are now shown in the 'Send to WorkShelf' dialog.
The CPU utilization percentage of the current CPU hog process in balloon tooltips was not respecting the 'Show decimal place for processes' setting.
Windows 11: automatic theme colorization with the dominant color of the current wallpaper was not picking changes to static wallpapers (i.e. non slideshow) made by the user via the Windows 11 Background Personalization panel.
Minimize animation now goes to the proper dock if using any of the per-monitor tasklist options.
Fixed 20 year old bug that could prevent some right click context menu actions on files and folders from being displayed (for instance, Properties was not being displayed for folder items under Windows 11).
Application would freeze under certain conditions when opening the Event Actions dialog of the Battery module.
Issue that could sometimes prevent folders from being launched in Explorer after changing an item type to Folder in the Item Properties dialog.
Windows would display an error message when trying to launch a folder marked as "Program" in the Item Properties dialog if the 'Run as Administrator' setting was enabled for that item. This setting is now disregarded if trying to launch a folder in Explorer.
Trying to restore a minimized window via its live preview thumbnail while the window was being displayed on the screen was failing most of the time.
Fixed bad mailto URI in the CPU and RAM usage warning dialogs (used ampersand character instead of question mark to separate subject line).
If the 'Hide after launching an application' setting was enabled, shelves and drawers were collapsing before completing the launch animation.
If the 'Hide after launching an application' setting was enabled, an accidental double click on a Grid Stack item could cause a shelf or drawer to literally disappear from the screen.
Opening the settings dialog of a module and pressing OK after restoring or auto-arranging desktop module positions would under certain circunstances move that module to previous screen position.
Mousing over the Hide/Show icon of a vertical shelf or drawer was not displaying the mouseover image.

New in Winstep Xtreme 20.10 (Oct 28, 2020)

Updated Portuguese language file.
Updated Hungarian language file.
Added compatibility with ObjectDock tabbed dock skins. To see the available OD tabbed dock skins you have installed, select 'Shelf Themes' in the Themes tab of Preferences. This will show both native Winstep skins as well as OD tabbed dock skins.
Added Pause, Play, Stop, Next and Previous commands to the right click context menu of the Media Player internal command.
Shelf theme colorization settings are now independent of Global theme colorization settings.
The Fonts dialog in the Appearance tab of Shelf, Drawer and Grid Stacks now only displays the fonts used for those objects instead of the fonts used in the whole theme.
Reorganized the Appearance tab of the Shelf, Drawer and Grid Stack Property dialogs.
The application's invisible main control window is now monitored to make sure it's not made visible again by 3rd party applications.
You can now double click the calendar desktop module to pop up a temporary full calendar when the desktop module is set to appear as iconic or has been captured into the NextSTART taskbar.
Added new 'Windows Settings' internal command to open the Windows 10 UWP Windows Settings panel.
Removed the "and all its contents" phrase from the confirmation dialog that pops up when trying to delete a dock, drawer or shelf in the Dock and Shelves tab in Preferences, as this could be misleading for folder type shelves and drawers because no actual files are ever deleted.
The Most Active Programs History dialog now automatically adjusts font size to make up for very large process names.
Added new 'Show decimal place for processes' option to the settings of the CPU Meter module. When enabled, any list of running processes - like the one shown on the CPU Meter desktop module in some themes or shown in the Most Active Programs dialog - will display a decimal place in the percentage of CPU usage for that process (e.g.; 1.3% instead of just 1%, or 1.8% instead of just 2%).
Added several new internal commands for accessing Windows 10 settings dialogs: Windows Settings, Apps, System, Network and Internet, Devices, Gaming, Time and Language, Accounts, Personalization, Ease of Access, Phone, Privacy, Windows Update, Search Settings and Power Options. These new Internal Commands are all grouped under 'Internal Commands - Settings' in the insert new item right click context menus.
Sunrise and sunset times are now correctly calculated for the MSN weather feed, which allows choosing whether to display a moon or a sun icon with nearly 100% accuracy.
An icon pointing to Explorer.exe in the dock now only displays a running indicator if there are Explorer windows open.
Docks, Shelves and Drawers can now be docked to and undocked from any screen edge and monitor by simply dragging them (users can press the ALT key while left clicking to make it easier). When docked they will show some initial resistance to being undocked by 'shaking' when they are about to detach. When docking or undocking by dragging, the Detach event sounds to give the user some audio feedback. To dock an horizontal dock or shelf, drag so the top edge touches the top screen edge or the bottom edge touches the bottom screen edge. To dock an horizontal dock or shelf to the side of the screen so it changes orientation, slowly drag it until the mouse pointer nearly touches the desired screen edge. To prevent docks, shelves and drawers from accidentally docking when moving them from one monitor to another, the auto-docking mechanism is speed sensitive: move across monitors rapidly to prevent the auto-docking mechanism from kicking in. The auto-docking/snap-to feature can be disabled in the 'More Options' dialog of the Behavior tab of the Properties dialog of Shelves, docks and Drawers.
The width of checkboxes in the User Interface is now automatically cropped so that clicking on a blank space right after the setting description no longer toggles the setting.
Added 'Disable simulated ALT key press when forcing windows to the foreground' setting to the More Options dialog in the General tab of Preferences. This should be checked only if having trouble with ALT+TAB or the ALT key getting stuck.
The Winstep Update Manager will now report hidden updates if the user performs a manual check for updates.
Increased the transparency of the non-lit LCD digits for better readability in full screen alarms/clock/sleep time
Opening the Appearance tab of a Shelf Properties dialog and pressing the OK button would make all temporary folder Grid Stacks from that Shelf open in a 1x1 icon grid.
Under Windows 10 viewing the Change Log could freeze the application for a long time or even crash it with an out of memory error.
Displaying icon labels in alternate lines in Shelves, Drawers and Grid Stacks was not displaying the labels in the correct position.
The 'snap mouse pointer to default button' feature only worked when using the 'Standard User Interface' mode.
Disabling or Enabling icon reflections in the dock via the right click context menu would cause icons of UWP apps to show as question marks.
Disabling the "Do not launch multiple sessions on the same application" setting would still require the user to double click on an icon to launch another session if the 'Combine dock icons with running applications' setting was also enabled.
On modern systems running more than 256 simultaneous processes, the CPU hog list might not accurately reflect the applications using the most of the CPU at the time. This was fixed in the Winstep service by doubling the limit to 512 simultaneous processes.
Themes with no name on the INI configuration file would appear on Theme right click context menus as blank entries. They now appear labeled as 'Untitled'.
Certain SYSTEM processes were not being enumerated properly and/or always returned 0% CPU and RAM usage.
Fixed some issues related to a Shelf's theme no longer being the same as the 'global' theme.
METAR weather information retrival is now automatically disabled if the application crashes when using a 3rd party DLL to access NOAA's website via HTTPS.
The MSN weather feed was not reporting the correct observation time for locations outside the GMT timezone.
Setting the position or orientation of Shelves and Drawers in the associated Properties dialog was no longer doing anything.
The first forecast day of the MSN weather feed sometimes pointed to the previous day, which caused the 5 day forecast to be out by one day (e.g.; the forecast for Fri would appear on the Sat slot).
Albany Airport, Australia had the wrong METAR code and was showing the conditions for Albury, Australia.
The 'Repeat every (x) years' option for alarms was not working properly.
Draging the temporary popup calendar module while the real desktop calendar module was attached to the NextSTART taskbar would mess with the original position of the detached module.
Shelves and Drawers with 3rd party themes might stop responding to clicks on the tabs after collapsing.
Dropping a folder into the left panel of the Media Player Settings dialog would create a playlist with the name of that folder and all the mp3 files in it, but it would miss the very first file.
Version 2004 of Windows 10 changed the default initial dimensions of system tray pop ups which now caused them to appear off screen.

New in Winstep Xtreme 19.2 (Mar 1, 2019)

Fixed weather module displaying N/A for some locations:
Some locations close to airports use a METAR code to obtain current weather conditions. METAR information is reported directly to NOAA by airports around the world and is thus updated more frequently as well as being more detailed.
Recently NOOA's website started enforcing HTTPS connections instead of regular HTTP connections, which caused the connection to the NOAA server to fail, but in such a way that it did not trigger the fail safe mechanism designed to automatically retrieve current weather conditions from another weather provider such as Weather.com.
This release fixes this issue and also adds HTTPS support to all the other backup weather feeds (Weather.com, MSN and Yahoo).
New Light Mode User Interface style:
Microsoft is adding a new light mode in the upcoming April Windows 10 update. We've proactively added a new matching 'Light Mode' to Winstep applications, which affects not only the User Interface panels but also context menus, balloon tooltips and thumbnail/live preview backgrounds.
Ability to set the size of Grid Stacks:
The size of a Grid Stack is automatically determined by default based on content and screen space available. Added new options to the Appearance tab of Grid Stack Property panels to set a fixed width and/or height.
Improved handling of multi monitor profiles:
The current multi monitor profile is now saved automatically when the application exits, which should prevent wrong settings from being applied after a display change.
Multi monitor profiles are especially useful for users with laptops and a second monitor, who need two different profiles for when at home or on the road.
Further improved handling of UWP apps:
Winstep applications are unique in their category because they're able to handle UWP apps in Windows 10 like normal Win32 applications. This is never-the-less made more difficult by Microsoft's propensity to break their own rules when it comes to UWP apps.
An example of this is Sticky Notes, which is owned by a Win32 Explorer window despite being a UWP app. This was causing Sticky Notes not to be handled properly by the Winstep application (especially if you tried pinning it to the dock or the NextSTART taskbar) until we fixed it in this release.
Also fixed in v19.2 is the fact that left clicking a UWP app in a Shelf, Drawer or Grid Stack would always launch a new instance regardless of the current 'Do not launch multiple sessions' setting.
Bad activation date for annual alarms:
A bug calculating the next activation date for annual alarms could cause them to skip one year. This has been fixed, but if you have any anual alarms set you might want to double-check their current activation dates - to fix it just edit the alarm and press OK.
Multiple User Interface tweaks:
Changed some of the icons used in the User Interface to better match the overal style of Windows 10 and made sure section headers in the User Interface are always bright enough to be seen against Dark Mode panel backgrounds even if the currently system Accent color isn't.
Fixed icon label text effect settings:
The text effect setting (Normal, Outline, Shadow, Sharp, Emboss) used for dock icon labels in the new Icon Label Settings dialog was not being properly applied.

New in Winstep Xtreme 18.12 (Dec 17, 2018)

Updated Portuguese language file.
In the Shelf/Drawer Transparency dialog, the user can now also specify that the tab text and control icons remain opaque. This allows making the Shelf or Drawer background fully transparent while still being able to switch to different tabs, collapse it, etc...
Floating label settings have now been moved to their own independent dialog, with immediate preview of changes.
Type of text effect applied to floating labels can now be specified (Normal, Outline, Shadow, Sharp, Emboss).
Opacity of the text effect applied to floating labels can now be specified.
The luminosity of the background color used in the label preview box can be changed with the mouse scroll wheel.
Improved sharpness of icon label text in Shelves and Drawers.
Moved the menu scaling setting to the Appearance tab of Docks, Shelves and Drawers Properties dialog.
'Pin to Dock' right click menu option has been moved to the top of the menu.
Sub-docks attached to Shelves and Drawers are now properly named in context menus and in the Item Properties dialog as 'Sub-Docks'.
The right click context menu of a sub-dock attached to a Shelf or Drawer now more suitably says 'Delete sub-dock' instead of 'Remove from Shelf'.
Themes can now also specify the running indicator image by including a 'NxIndicator.png/.tif/.ico' bitmap file in the theme folder. The theme will only use that indicator bitmap, however, if the user has left the running indicator selection as 'Default' instead of specifically choosing an indicator from the list of available indicator bitmaps.
you can now specify 'No Label' for icon labels in Shelves and Drawers, at which point not even a floating label on mouseover is displayed.
The entire contents of sub-docks can now be copied by dragging & dropping a sub-dock icon while pressing the CTRL key.
Right clicking on a Folder item set to open as a menu and selecting Open from the context menu that pops up now opens the folder in Explorer.
The Browse for Folder feature now uses a more flexible version of the dialog.
Added new 'Grid Stacks'. Grid Stacks can be added as icons to docks, shelves and drawers. Like Shelf tabs, a Grid Stack can be one of many different types (Regular, Folder, Desktop, Recent, etc...). Like sub-docks, Grid Stacks are only kept open temporarily, until the user clicks somewhere else. The size of Grid Stacks is calculated automatically. Grid Stacks, like sub-docks, can be nested inside each other to as many levels as the user wants. Each Grid Stack has individual settings that can be accessed by right clicking the icon and selecting 'Grid Stack Properties'. To add a new Grid Stack, right click, select 'Add New Item', then Grid Stack then select the type of Grid Stack you want.
Added 'Convert to Grid Stack' option to the context menu of folders in docks and Regular Shelf tabs or Drawers.
Added 'Convert to Folder' to the context menu of folder type Grid Stacks.
Added 'change Folder' to the context menu of folder type Grid Stacks, to make it quicker to change the folder a 'folder type' Grid Stack is pointing to.
Added 'Downloads' (shows the contents of the Downloads folder) new tab type to Shelves, Drawers and Grid Stacks.
Replaced the old 'RAS Connections' tab type with new 'Connections' tab, showing all the available network connections on the sytem.
The user now always gets a confirmation dialog When deleting a sub-dock or Grid Stack regardless of the current delete confirmation settings.
Improved the icon caching mechanism.
Contents of Grid Stacks are now cached in memory after opening the Grid Stack for the first time.
The colors of the icon grid in Shelves and Grid Stacks are now calculated automatically when the original theme did not support them or the theme author did not set them correctly.
Added new 'Open folders in Grid Stacks' setting to Folder type tabs in a Shelf or Folder type Drawers and Grid Stacks. Opens all folders as a temporary Grid Stack when clicking on them - note that folders can still be opened in Explorer by right clicking and selecting Open or in a menu by right clicking and selecting 'Browse'.
Added 'Open as Grid Stack' option to the right click context menu of folders.
Deleting a 'Regular' type tab in the Contents tab of a Shelf Properties dialog now prompts for confirmation.
Changed the default Capture Delay of the Capture Desktop internal command from none to 5 seconds.
Added 'Ascending/Descending' settings to the Sort By options of tabs that can be sorted.
Opening Network related tabs (such as Network Connections) no longer blocks the application while Windows discovers all the network objects.
Grid Stacks can be detached by dragging them away from the original position. Detached Grid Stacks stay open until the user explicitily closes them.
Some previous per-dock/shelf settings are now global (i.e.; they apply to all docks and shelves): switch shelf mini-tabs, shift icons to insert, open sub-docks on mouseover, no final boing animation effect, close sub-docks on launch, no icon reflection on vertical sub-docks.
Added new 'Detach' sound event, played when a Grid Stack is detached.
Improved keyboard navigation of Shelves, Drawers and Grid Stacks.
Added new 'Quick Search Filter' to Shelves, Drawers and Grid Stacks. Simply start typing to start filtering content: a search box pops up so you can see what you are typing and know that content is currently being filtered. The ESC key can be used to terminate the filter and backspace to delete characters.
The Quick Search filter and be disabled in the More Options dialog of the Behavior tab of Shelves, Drawers and Grid Stacks. The color of the Quick Search filter can be customized in the same place.
A Shelf set to hide the tabs can now always be activated by screen edge bump or swipe.
A Shelf or Drawer docked to a screen edge and inverted can now also be expanded by pulling the bottom edge.
Pressing ESC on a Shelf/Drawer now collapses the Shelf Drawer. Pressing Enter when the Shelf/Drawer is collapsed expands it.
Some Shelf themes no longer appear as if the top of the Shelf body has been 'cropped' when the tabs are set to be left, centered, or right justified.
Windows shortcuts (.lnk files) to folders and now also be opened as Grid Stacks and browsed via menus.
Added automatic multi-monitor profiles, allowing different objects to be at different positions and enabled/disabled for each monitor configuration. Multi Monitor Profiles can be disabled in the General tab of Preferences.
Thumbnail extraction should now be much faster as it now uses the local Windows thumbnail cache when available.
Added new 'Reset Icon Cache' option to the Dock and Shelf Management sub-menu in the main right click context menu of Shelves, Drawers and Grid Stacks. It purges and rebuilds the internal icon cache
Fixed some lingering issues with pinning some Windows Store Apps to the dock.
Dragging a floating Drawer across the screen when collapsed by dragging it by the tab, would make it randomly jump all over, sometimes even going off screen.
When using a Dock and Shelf Management option to create a tab in a Shelf from a Drawer or a Dock, the application was asking the user to select a Shelf even if there was only one Shelf created.
Text greater than 10.pt with the outline and shadow effects was being rendered at a smaller size than it should.
The balloon tooltip was not displaying file information if the filename was enclosed in quotes.
Folder type menus invoked from a dock were still overlapping the dock icons when openning.
The Media Player icon in Shelves and Drawers was not accepting dropped audio files or folders.
Selecting 'Run As Administrator' from a context menu and then replying 'No' to the UAC prompt would result in a second UAC prompt appearing on a 64 bit system.
When deleting alarms in the Alarm Manager the alarm selection could jump to a different alarm than the next one on the list.
Fixed potential data loss issue where a sub-dock could be deleted when dragging it into a new position in the main dock.
An in-Shelf sub-dock could become 'stuck' and not open again until the application was restarted if a Shelf or Drawer was closed with a sub-dock still open.
Fixed issue that could cause the wrong item to be deleted when moving an item from one Shelf or Drawer to another.
Clicking on a Language Bar IC in a sub-dock to open the Language Bar menu was closing the sub-dock.
The 'Run As' and 'Open Folder in a Menu' item attributes where not being carried over when moving or copying items via drag & drop.
Clicking on a folder menu for the second time now closes the menu instead of closing it and immediately opening it again.
The arrows in the calendar desktop module were not being positioned properly when the module was scaled and also using a non-default theme.
Fixed issue displaying the icon of and the launching of some files with a filename containing non-ANSI characters.
Fixed issue with drag & drop of some files with a filename containing non-ANSI characters.
Text in the Shareware Reminder dialog was getting cropped at the end on high DPI systems.
When removing an item from a Shelf the confirmation prompt mentioned a Drawer instead.
Fixed minor memory leak when closing Shelfs, Drawers or Grid Stacks showing folders in the user's hard drive.
Fixed potential corruption if changing the contents of docks while also changing the contents of Shelves via the Contents tab of a Shelf Properties dialog.
Fixed access violation error that could happen when deleting the last file in a folder type tab and also an associated visual glitch where the icon disappeared only to re-appear immediately.
Sort By Date was only taking the date into consideration and ignoring the time.
When opening a 'Network' tab type in a Shelf or Grid Stack for the second time, items with exactly the same name would show identical icons.
Monochrome 1bit icons (i.e.; color bitmap) could crash the application.
Animated icons were not being properly colorized when icon colorization was applied.
Fixed issue where the blur region of a fully expanded Shelf could be displayed for a collapsed Shelf.
The left mini-tab symbol was not being positioned properly for Shelves/Drawers docked to the right screen edge.
Under some circustances a tab would still show when the Shelf/Drawer was collapsed even if 'Hide Tabs' was enabled.
Fixed Power Options icon in a Windows Control Panel tab appearing as a Question Mark icon.
When opening or closing a sub-dock, any particle animation launch effect in the parent dock would be cut short.
Deleting or moving a Shelf tab while the Shelf Properties dialog was open could lead to corruption and/or content loss of one or more Regular tabs in that Shelf.
Changes made to the properties of a Shelf tab while the Shelf Properties dialog was open would be lost.
Fixed minimum Drawer size calculation which could allow the tab header to become cropped with certain themes.
'Disable menu scaling on high DPI settings' was no longer working properly after adding manual menu scaling in v18.10.
'Disable Shelf scaling on high DPI settings' was not properly scaling font size after v18.8.
Selecting 'No Effect' in the Effects Panel and then clicking on the Effect Settings button would crash the application.

New in Winstep Xtreme 18.10 (Oct 9, 2018)

New in Winstep Xtreme 18.5 (Jun 1, 2018)

New in Winstep Xtreme 18.3 (Apr 1, 2018)

Speed! We've done it again: Intel takes it away, Winstep gives it back: The fixes for the Intel MeltDown and Spectre vulnerabilities had a 10-15% cost in overall performance for all desktop users (and 35% or more for servers in data centers with heavy I/O loads).
With a combination of extensive code profiling and optimzation, plus a new compiler switch to remove integer overflow checks, overall performance of Winstep applications has been increased by 10-15%, which nicelly makes up for the peformance hit caused by the Intel vulnerabilities.
Performance variations in the 10-15% range are hard to spot in real world usage, but despite this you should definitely notice a decrease in CPU usage when moving the mouse over magnifying docks, etc...
Heads up Home Theater users: added full keyboard support to docks.
New Media Player internal command:
Internal commands are special commands that you can add as shortcuts to docks, Shelf tabs and to Winstep Xtreme's NextSTART menus, hotspots and taskbar: Hibernate, Power Off Monitor, Empty Recycler, Show Start Menu, Language Bar, CD Control, Lookup IP address and over 80 more!
The new Media Player internal command adds a very quick, convenient and unobtrusive way to listen to your favorite musics at the click of a button without having to open a full blown media player.
One click on the Media Player icon starts the music playing, a second click pops up a media control bar from where you can pause and stop audio, skip tracks and configure the Media Player. When the media control bar is open, volume levels can be adjusted with the scroll wheel of your mouse.
The new Media Player internal command is very simple to use and uses the same playlists defined for the Winstep Alarms so you don't have to set both up independently.
The media control bar offers full support for keyboard navigation and the Media Player can be directly controled using the media keys on your keyboard even when the control bar is closed. You can also use the built-in media control internal commands for this.
New Power Saving mode - Winstep just turned green and joined the effort to save the planet:
Eye candy is a huge component of Winstep applications. Unfortunately keeping all those nice animations, effects and system meters going has an impact on CPU usage, which, in turn, increases energy consumption - not a problem if your system is a desktop running on AC Power, but a potential runtime limiting factor for laptops running on battery.
Winstep applications now include two 'Power Saving' modes (Normal and Ultra) designed to extend your laptop or tablet's battery life. These power saving modes can be enabled manually via the new 'Power Saving' internal command or automatically when your PC's battery runs low, when Windows 10 activates the 'Battery Saver' mode, when the screen goes into standby, when a full screen application is running, or based on a combination of the above.
Voice notifications are used to warn the user when the current power saving mode changes, but these can be turned off if required or only enabled for specific events.
On tests, the normal power saving mode reduced CPU usage of the Winstep application - and therefore power usage - by up to 75%, and ultra mode manages to extend this a bit further. This is mostly accomplished by reducing the polling/update rate of all the meter modules and disabling all non-essential cosmetic animations.
For instance, in Ultra mode modules are only updated once every 4 seconds, opposed to 2 in normal power saving mode and every second when the power saving mode is disabled.
Normal power saving mode does not disable the all-important icon mouse over animations (Ultra power saving mode already does that for maximum savings), so it can even be automatically enabled as soon as the laptop starts running on battery without much impact on the user experience.
More User Interface (UI) improvements:
Message boxes now match the current UI mode, the UI mode selector has been moved to the About tab of Preferences for easier access, the button with the focus is now highlighted in blue and the color of LCD alarms is no longer changed when switching between dark and light modes.
New optional 'time only' digital version of the clock module:
The digital version of the clock module with the built-in calendar goes all the way back to the original in Steve Job's NeXT OS. Unfortunately the calendar also limits the space available to display the actual time and, at the lower icon sizes of very full docks, it becomes difficult to read, forcing you to mouse over it in order to magnify the icon.
When our users complain, we listen. Because of this and also because the new calendar module makes the calendar portion of the digital clock pretty much irrelevant, a new 'show time only' setting was added to the Clock Module Settings dialog. Enabling this setting displays an alternate version of the digital clock made specifically to maximize readability at lower icon sizes while still looking good:
The user can now also choose what happens when he clicks on the clock module: it can display the Windows calendar, the Winstep calendar or a full screen LCD clock.
Added optional high-DPI support to docks:
Up until now docks deliberately ignored the system's DPI settings and relied on the size specified by the user for dock icons. This was not ideal, however, since to make up for a higher screen DPI the size of icons when magnified also had to be changed manually from the default 128x128 pixels.
On new installations docks now automatically scale up using the current system DPI settings, but on existing installations (i.e.; when upgrading to this version), to avoid unwanted and unexpected changes in the size of existing docks, the 'dock scaling on high DPI settings' setting is disabled and must be enabled manually.
Icon reflections can now be fine tuned to be more, or less, transparent.
New Capture Desktop options:
Capture Desktop is one of many available internal commands that can be added to docks, the Shelf and NextSTART menus and taskbar. Its simple purpose is to take a quick screenshot of your current desktop and save it in a folder of your choice.
You can now press the ALT key when clicking on the Capture Desktop icon to take a screenshot of the currently active window instead of the whole desktop. The filename of the last screenshot taken is now also preserved between sessions, and the right click menu of the Capture Desktop internal command now holds options to open the last screenshot taken and browse the containing folder.
Added 'Sort By:' options to the Recent Documents tab in the Shelf:
The Recent Documents tab in the Shelf can now be sorted Alphabetically, by Date, by File Type or by File Size.
Fixed Alt GR key getting stuck:
Under certain circunstances the Alt GR key could become stuck despite not being physically pressed.
Explosion of new features added to the Alarm Manager:
The built-in Alarm Manager has become so powerful that it could easily be sold as a stand-alone application at this point. Besides its ability to pop-up reminders with audio, it is also a full blown task scheduler featuring some very flexible scheduling abilities.
Alarm settings are now available as tabs of the main Alarm Manager window, instead of being on a separate dialog like before.
Alarms can now be filtered and sorted by creation or activation date. You can now also temporarily disable all active alarms.
You can create and manage your own playlists in the Audio tab. Audio files can now be added in bulk to a playlist via the Browse button or by simply dragging and dropping MP3, WMA, WAV and MID files directly into the Audio Files list box. The playlists created here are shared with the new Media Player internal command.
Each alarm can now optionally use its own fixed volume and LCD brightness settings, or use the variable settings defined in the Wake-Up tab. If you like waking up with music, you can define an alarm that starts playing softly and slowly increases the volume over time. Likewise the brightness of the alarm LCD screen can be slowly increased so it doesn't hurt your eyes when you wake up in darkness.
New slide-in setttings were added to the 'Show a Reminder' panel in the Alarm Editor dialog, so alarms can either use the Wake-Up settings defined above or have individual volume, brightness and snooze setttings. Likewise you can now also color code individual LCD alarms.
For those who like to fall asleep while listening to music, there is a new 'Sleep Timer' internal command which uses the settings defined in this tab.
You click on the Sleep Timer icon as you go to bed and a full screen LCD clock display pops up. Volume and brightness decrease over the pre-defined time until the full screen clock finally closes when volume reaches zero.
You can now choose one of a handful of pre-built skins and bezels for your LCD alarm reminders in window mode.
You can also specify different foreground and background colors for the LCD displays, which now also feature weather icons specifically made to match the LCD style of the alarms.
Moving the mouse pointer over an alarm window smoothly fades the control buttons in, and you can now skip tracks and pause the music. Clicking the settings button allows you to change volume, brigthness and the snooze duration directly.
Double clicking the alarm toggles it between full screen and window mode, and the scroll wheel on your mouse can be used to control either the volume or the brightness of the LCD display, as defined in the LCD tab of the Alarm Manager. You can also control the audio using the media keys on your keyboard.
Many other performance and stability improvements.
WorkShelf v18.3 complete change log:
Updated the Portuguese language file.
Added a description in the Windows Services Panel to the Winstep service used to perform operations that require admin privileges (install theme fonts, adjust the time, fast boot, etc...).
Added code to help troubleshoot problems with the service.
If there is an Internet connection available but an undetermined error occurred, the 'Check Internet Connection' dialog in the TroubleShooting Options dialog will now also return the Winsock error message.
The Alarm Manager now displays an Audio symbol if that alarm has an associated audio file or playlist.
The application now uses customized Message boxes to match the current User Interface mode.
Improved the performance of the Alarms Manager dialog in terms of CPU usage.
Added smooth scrolling to the Alarms Manager dialog.
Improved the scrolling performance of the Docks & Shelves tab in Preferences.
Command Buttons in Dark or Gray UI modes now become highlighted when they have the focus.
Pressing the ALT shift key while the Capture Desktop internal command takes a screenshot will capture only the active window instead of the whole desktop.
The name of the last screenshot taken by the Capture Desktop internal command is now persistent between sessions.
The right-click context menu of the Capture Desktop internal command now has options to Browse the folder the last screenshot was saved to in a menu, open the folder in Explorer, or open the screenshot.
Browse folder sub-menus now show item icons where the menu theme allows.
The Balloon tooltip now also displays the number of frames in an animated icon.
Desktop module previews in the Modules tab of Preferences are no longer allowed to be larger than the preview window at 100% scaling (e.g.; default calendar module).
The contents of the Recent Documents tab in the Shelf can now be sorted by name, date, type and size.
Made some cosmetic changes to the selection rectangle in the Shelf when the mouseover effect is set to None.
The solid rounded selection rectangle drawn when the Shelf mouseover effect is set to None is now semi-transparent so the background can be seen through.
Added keyboard support to docks. Arrow keys to select item, Enter key to execute, ESC to close a sub-dock or unselect current item.
Added two power saving modes, normal and Ultra, for conserving power when running on battery. Can be set manually in the Advanced tab of Preferences, via a new 'Power Saving Mode' internal command toggle, or automatically when battery levels reach a certain percentage or, under Windows 10, when the system Battery Saver activates. Each power mode has separate voice and/or sound notifications.
Added new 'Power Saving Mode' internal command to toggle between the 3 different power modes (off, on, ultra). The icon is gray when power saving is disabled, green when enabled, and red when ultra is active.
Moved the 'User Interface Mode' button to the About tab in Preferences.
Added high DPI support to docks by default and a new 'Disable dock scaling on high DPI settings' option in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences. High DPI support is enabled by default on new installations and disabled by default on existing installations.
Replaced the rotating earth Email Checker module style with a smoother higher resolution animation.
The 'Apply to All Modules' button in the Modules tab of Preferences now asks for confirmation.
Added full keyboard support to docks: use arrow keys to select an icon, enter to launch currently selected icon, Esc to unselect/close sub-docks.
Added new Full Screen Application exclusion list. Activation methods such as edge bumps and hotkeys are normally automatically disabled when another application is running full screen to prevent accidental activations while, for instance, playing a game, etc... With the new exclusion list you can exclude specific applications (for instance, a Media Player application on a PC Home Theater environment) from this rule. This way you can assign a keyboard shortcut to activate the dock while the full screen Media Player is running, then use the arrow keys to navigate the dock and launch movies, applications, etc...
The drop down portion of a monitor selection combo box is now wide enough to hold the longest monitor name in a multi-monitor system.
Added new 'Animated icons play full animation on mouseover' setting to the Performance vs. Memory usage dialog. This setting, disabled by default for performance reasons (animated icons usually have very long animations, which, together with the dock magnify effect being combined with other mouseover effects, can result in a somewhat noticeable performance hit), enables animated icons set to animate only on mouseover to finish their animations even when the mouse pointer has already moved away from the icon.
Disabled 'Integer Overflow Checks' on compiled code and optimized a few critical routines, which should result in a 5%-10% overall performance increase.
A customized battery module now displays all the different frames when playing the charging animation.
Added option (enabled by default) to automatically enable Ultra Power Saving mode when the monitor enters standby.
Added option (disabled by default) to automatically enable normal Power Saving mode when a full screen application is running. This ensures the Winstep application uses 75% less CPU than normal when, for instance, running a game, while still remaining fully functional.
Non-native dock themes now also display the author's name in the Theme preview panel when that info is available.
Added new 'Fast Boot' internal command to toggle Fast Boot.
Default dock in Windows 10 now features a 'Fast Boot' internal command icon to alert users to the existence of this feature.
If 'Do not launch sessions of the same application' is enabled, clicking the icon of an application that is already running will now minimize it if it is already in the foreground (as it already happens when the dock is set to display running applications) or bring it to the foreground otherwise.
Made some misc.improvements to the Net Meter code.
Changed colorization method for particle mouse over effects from tint to shift hue, as this also preserves whites.
If the 'Ignore edge bumps near the titlebar button area of maximized windows' setting is enabled, edge bumps near the taskabar's Start Button area are also ignored.
Double clicking an Alarm Reminder will now toggle it between full screen and windowed.
The scrollwheel in the mouse can now be used to dim an LCD alarm reminder or change the volume.
Added new 'Sleep Timer' internal command, which runs WorkShelf's new Sleep Timer full screen clock.
Alarms can now be filtered so only active alarms are shown.
Alarms can now be sorted by creation date or activation date, in ascending or descending order.
Alarm Settings have now been merged into the Alarms Manager window and divided into several tabs: Alarms, Audio, Wake-Up, Sleep and LCD.
Added new 'Sleep Timer' internal command, which opens a full screen LCD clock for those who like to fall asleep while listening to music, with audio and brightness setttings in the Sleep tab of the new Alarms Manager window.
Added new 'Auto Fade In' setting to the Audio tab of the Alarm Manager. When enabled, audio volume always fades in from zero until the pre-determined final volume.
You can now select multiple audio files at once when adding musics to a playlist in the Audio tab of the Alarm Manager via the Browse button.
You can now drag & drop multiple .mp3, .wma, .wav and .mid files directly into the Audio Files listbox in the Audio tab of the Alarm Manager.
Alarms can now follow the volume and brightness settings set in the Wake tab of the Alarm Manager or specify per-alarm volume and brightness settings.
LCD color and Snooze time can now optionally be defined on a per-alarm base.
Added multiple pre-defined skins to the Alarm Reminder in windowed mode, which can be selected in the new LCD tab of the Alarm Manager.
LCD Background color can now be set as well.
Audio can now be paused and resumed, and tracks skipped or rewound from within the LCD style alarm reminder.
Added Settings icon to the LCD alarm reminder from where you can control Volume, Brightness and Snooze time.
The LCD Alarm Reminder now uses weather icons that match the LCD style of the clock.
The LCD Alarm Reminder, besides the temperature, now also displays current weather conditions.
Battery information in the LCD Alarm Reminder has been moved to the bottom left and the new battery icon correctly displays current battery state.
Close and Snooze buttons in an LCD Alarm Reminder, as well as the new audio control and Alarm Setting icons, now automatically 'fade out' if the mouse pointer is moved away from the window or is not moved for a time.
The mouse pointer in a full screen alarm reminder window is now automatically made invisible if the mouse is not moved for a time.
LCD Alarm Reminder window can now be scaled up or down in size by up to 20%.
Added new 'Media Player' internal command, which works with the playlists defined for alarms and is controled by a pop up media bar.
Clicking the clock can now either show the Windows calendar, the Winstep calendar or a full screen LCD clock.
Moved the 'make a ticking sound every second' setting in Clock Settings to the 'Clock Speech and Chime Settings' dialog
The base transparency of icon reflections can now be adjusted.
Exit was the button with keyboard focus when opening Preferences.
Changing the User Interface mode to black no longer resets the Alarm LCD Colors.
Increased the maximum text width for balloon tooltips when using the Windows 10 style to prevent Wanda cookies from getting word-wrapped mid-sentence because of the wider font used in this style.
An application's window with a vbmodal window open on top could be minimized, but trying to restore it again would fail, leaving no way to access that application.
Fixed communication issue with the Winstep Windows service that could prevent the retrieval of performance data (CPU and RAM usage) for elevated processes.
Changing a module icon via the Item Properties dialog in the Shelf would result in the Shelf stopping to respond to mouse clicks.
Updated Weather.com weather module codes for Honk Kong and Cheung Chau.
Fixed minor GDI+ leak when animating icons in the Shelf.
On a Shelf with no mouse over effects the Launch and Attention effects would leave leftovers of the selection rectangle when animating.
When alternating between specific mouseover and launch or attention effects the first frame of the latter could glitch.
Opening a sub-dock and then quickly clicking on the sub-dock icon again before the sub-dock had completed the opening animation could crash the application with an Access Violation error.
Style of the Recycler and Email Checker modules kept being reset to Recycle Bin and Envelope, respectively.
Fixed issue where icon label text in the Shelf would look terrible when shifting icons for drag & drop operations.
Fixed potential issue that could occur if an animation was playing exactly when the value returned by the timeGetTime() function wrapped around to zero or crossed the signed long boundary. This is something that only happens once every 24.85 days, so the chances of a problem actually occuring was very, very, small, but still within the realms of possibility.
Star background in the Moon Calendar dialog was scrolling too fast when the moon was not animating.
Fixed major issue when overlapping the number of running instances on an animated icon in the dock. Effects could range from icon appearing cropped when animating to potential GDI+ handle leak or even crash.
Dragging a running application icon in the right side of the dock into the left side of the dock could result in an item with the wrong application name.
Fixed issue that could crash the application when switching to a theme with a customized Email Checker module animation.
Fixed issue with the CD Control internal command that could cause the drive to keep ejecting and closing the media multiple times until a timeout error occured.
A full screen alarm reminder would trigger the 'full screen application running' mode.
Fixed issue where ALT key could become stuck after activating a dock.
Alarms set to activate only once would no longer activate at the preset time and date if Snooze was used while testing the alarm.
Fixed issue validating the time in the Alarm Edit panel when the clock was in 12 hour format and the time was 12 PM.
The battery module image would not update to show the current charge if the module was set not to display Battery Charge.
Battery status information in the Battery Information dialog would not update correctly if the module was set to not display battery charge or battery runtime.
It was not possible to set the weekday format (short, medium or long) for the weekday row in desktop calendar themes.
Fixed misc.UI alignment issues on high DPI settings
NextSTART v18.3 complete change log:
Updated the Portuguese language file.
Added a description in the Windows Services Panel to the Winstep service used to perform operations that require admin privileges (install theme fonts, adjust the time, fast boot, etc...).
Added code to help troubleshoot problems with the service.
The Language Bar on the NextSTART taskbar is now displayed as simple white text, to blend in with the other Windows 10 system icons, unless the user specifies a background icon.
Menus no longer become inactive when opening a 'More' sub-menu, at least not until a sub-menu outside the 'More' chain is opened.
The application now uses customized Message boxes to match the current User Interface mode.
Command Buttons in Dark or Gray UI modes now become highlighted when they have the focus.
Pressing the ALT shift key while the Capture Desktop internal command takes a screenshot will capture only the active window instead of the whole desktop.
Added two power saving modes, normal and Ultra, for conserving power when running on battery. Can be set manually in the Advanced tab of Preferences, via a new 'Power Saving Mode' internal command toggle, or automatically when battery levels reach a certain percentage or, under Windows 10, when the system Battery Saver activates.
Added new 'Power Saving Mode' internal command to toggle between the 3 different power modes (off, on, ultra). The icon is gray when power saving is disabled, green when enabled, and red when ultra is active.
Moved the 'User Interface Mode' button to the About tab in Preferences.
Moved the 'More Options' button to the General tab of Preferences.
The Capture Desktop internal command now also displays a countdown in the icon if a delay is set in the settings.
Added new Full Screen Application exclusion list. Activation methods such as edge bumps and hotkeys are normally automatically disabled when another application is running full screen to prevent accidental activations while, for instance, playing a game, etc... With the new exclusion list you can exclude specific applications (for instance, a Media Player application on a PC Home Theater environment) from this rule. This way you can assign a keyboard shortcut to activate a menu while the full screen Media Player is running, then use the arrow keys to navigate the menu and launch movies, applications, etc...
The drop down portion of a monitor selection combo box is now wide enough to hold the longest monitor name in a multi-monitor system.
Added option (enabled by default) to automatically enable Ultra Power Saving mode when the monitor enters standby.
Added option (disabled by default) to automatically enable normal Power Saving mode when a full screen application is running. This ensures the Winstep application uses 75% less CPU than normal when, for instance, running a game, while still remaining fully functional.
Added new 'Fast Boot' internal command to toggle Fast Boot.
If the 'Ignore edge bumps near the titlebar button area of maximized windows' setting is enabled, edge bumps near the taskabar's Start Button area are also ignored.
Added new 'Sleep Timer' internal command, which runs WorkShelf's new Sleep Timer full screen clock. WorkShelf must be running for this internal command to work.
Added new 'Media Player' internal command, which works with the playlists defined for alarms and is controled by a pop up media bar
Right clicking on a Language Bar menu item would display an empty right-ckick context menu.
Exit was the button with keyboard focus when opening Preferences.
An application's window with a vbmodal window open on top could be minimized, but trying to restore it again would fail, leaving no way to access that application.
Fixed communication issue with the Winstep Windows service that could prevent the retrieval of performance data (CPU and RAM usage) for elevated processes.
Fixed issue where the NextSTART taskbar would randomly appear with the wrong width/height at startup.
Fixed potential issue that could occur if an animation was playing exactly when the value returned by the timeGetTime() function wrapped around to zero or crossed the signed long boundary. This is something that only happens once every 24.85 days, so the chances of a problem actually occuring was very, very, small, but still within the realms of possibility.
Fixed issue with the CD Control internal command that could cause the drive to keep ejecting and closing the media multiple times until a timeout error occured.
Fixed issue where ALT key could become stuck after activating a menu via an hotspot.
Fixed issue where clicking the Start Button of a NextSTART taskbar docked to a secondary monitor at the right of the primary would open the main NextSTART menu on the primary monitor instead.

New in Winstep Xtreme 18.1 (Jan 21, 2018)

New in Winstep Xtreme 17.12 (Dec 29, 2017)

Updated the Portuguese language file.
Updated the Portuguese (Brazil) language file.
Updated the Farsi language file.
Updated the Chinese Simplified language file.
Updated Hungarian language file (inc.).
You can now drag & drop PNG, ICO and TIF files into folders in a dock or Shelf as if they were normal files by pressing either SHIFT or CTRL while dragging. This allows you to move and copy those files as normal instead of them being used as icon replacement images.
Added new 'Take Picture' sound event, and default camera shutter sound file, played when the user clicks on the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.
Added new picture quality, delay, and sound settings to the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.
New 'Alarm Manager' internal command, opens the Alarm Manager window.
New 'Hide All' internal command, hides/collapses all docks, the Shelf and desktop modules.
You can now launch a new instance of an application appearing on the dock as running, but not pinned to it, either by pressing SHIFT while left clicking the icon or by double clicking the icon.
Added the 'Windows10Nx' Nexus/dock theme to the default themes collection.
Added missing ex-Yugoslavia countries to the weather codes database. Automatic geo-location via IP address should now work with the new countries too.
Added many new Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia locations with associated weather codes.
Desktop modules can now be moved with pixel precision by clicking on them and using the arrow keys.
Internet/URL shortcuts are now automatically resolved into internal 'URL' type items when dropped into a dock or a Regular tab on the Shelf. This allows the source shortcuts (e.g.; shortcuts to Steam games or websites) to be later deleted from the file system without the entries in the dock or Shelf stopping to work.
The Media Control internal commands Previous, Next, Play, Pause, Stop, Mute, Volume Up and Volume Down should now also work with media players other than WinAmp and Windows Media Player. Please note: some media players, such as VLC and Gom Player, must first be configured to accept global keys, i.e.; accept the keys even if the player window itself does not have the focus.
Environment variables such as %ALLUSERSPROFILE% are now automatically expanded when launching an item.
Sub-docks now appear next to the parent dock and always above it when magnifying.
The first weather forecast icon now always shows the max temperature for that day, regardless of current time.
Added 'Opaque Icon Labels' setting to the Shelf transparency dialogs.
Window preview thumbnails now automatically scale up on high DPI systems.
Thumbnail images on balloon tooltips now now automatically scale up on high DPI systems.
The icon label for a sub-dock icon now immediately fades away when a sub-dock is automatically open on mouse-over.
Drag & drop file operations (i.e.; dropping files into a folder tab in the Shelf or folder icons) are now performed in the background, which makes the application remain responsive even when copying or moving multi-megabyte files.
Added more WHOIS servers to the Active Connections dialog, and WHOIS information is now properly retrieved from the root registar.
UWP (Universal Windows Apps) in Windows 10 are now labeled as such in the balloon information tooltips.
When dragging & dropping an executable file directly from an Explorer folder the name of the resulting shortcut is now automatically retrieved from the file description (e.g.; iexplore.exe now becomes 'Internet Explorer' instead of just 'iexplorer').
Windows 10 supports setting PNG files as the current desktop wallpaper, which was previously not supported on the panels in Preferences that displayed the current wallpaper as a background image (e.g.; Themes tab), resulting in a solid white background.
Added new 'Apps' tab type to the Shelf which displays all the installed Windows UWP Apps in Windows 10.
Improved weather module GeoLocation for when Maxmind returns a city name not in the Weather codes database but MSN returns a different city name for that same location, which already IS in the database.
Under Windows 10 the 'Frequently Used Programs' tab in the Shelf now also displays UWP apps.
Added 'Apps' tab to the default Shelf under Windows 10.
The balloon tooltip of the Capture Desktop internal command now displays a thumbnail of the last screenshot taken
Nothing would happen when trying to hide multiple docks sharing the same activation keyboard shortcut with toggle mode on.
Clicking in the Themes tab in Preferences and very rapidly clicking on another tab before the Themes tab finished displaying completely could result in the Themes tab getting 'stuck'.
The 'Tilt moon based on observer's location on earth' setting now makes the moon module appear in exactly the same position angle as the real moon, i.e.; as seen by the observer if he looks out the window (topocentric view). In contrast, the Moon Calendar always shows the geocentric position angle.
After 12 PM (Noon) the sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset hours displayed were those for the following day instead of the current day.
Hotkeys assigned to Battery, Calendar and Moon module items in the Shelf and docks were being ignored.
The currently selected day on the calendar desktop module would sometimes remain highlighted after the mouse pointer left the module.
Fixed retrieval of current weather conditions for when Weather.com does not provide valid current conditions information.
The Email Checker module should now work properly with ISPs (looking at you AT&T) that do not follow the correct POP3 protocol (RFC 1939).
Midnight in 12 hour format was being displayed as '0 AM' instead of '12 AM' in the Alarm Manager and Alarm Reminder dialogs.
The ' Messages Unread' report of the Email Checker on an IMAP connection was not being translated into the currently selected language.
Information regarding the latest Email Checker connections was being incorrectly reported when opening the Email Checker Settings dialog from a context menu.
The application could freeze for several minutes after returning from Standby on Surface Pro laptops because of the 'Connected Standby/InstantGo' power saving feature used in those laptops.
The Shelf's active tab was always opaque if the 'icons remain opaque' setting was enabled.
Fixed glitchy resize of the available screen area which could happen when a dock was set to reserve screen space, the dock was forced to automatically reduce the user preset icon size in order to fit on the screen, and a new dock item was added or removed.
Fixed several issues related to reserving screen space, respecting reserved screen space, and the interaction of docks using these mechanisms (e.g.; docks set to reserve screen space and respect screen space on different edges should no longer overlap). Also reserved screen space is now automatically returned when a dock is deleted or disabled.
The application could crash with an Access Violation error when opening an Item Properties dialog if an URL was associated to a NextSTART hotspot/quick launch item.
System tray popups no longer appear at the left of the screen in Windows 10 and should now be correctly positioned next to the mouse pointer.
Fixed some issues which could cause the WHOIS right click context menu command to fail on the Active Connections dialog.
Microsoft broke drag & drop operations from the Windows Start Menu in one of the latest Windows 10 updates, which caused shortcuts dragged from the Start Menu not to be resolved properly. This resulted in dock items of 'virtual shell item' types with low resolution icons pointing to shortcut (.lnk) files instead of directly to the target files.
Immediately after a settings reset to factory default, the weather module tooltip would display 'Location not set'.
Showing a balloon tooltip in the Moon Calendar dialog could crash the application with an Access Violation error.
Fixed issue which could cause a crash or data corruption while performing a WHOIS in the Active Connections dialog.
Pressing the Snooze button in an Alarm was not updating the scheduled alarm markers in the desktop Calendar module.
Pressing the Shift key while right clicking on an item in a non-Regular tab would generate an error.
Fixed some potential timing issues with Windows systray pop ups under Windows 10.
Fixed some issues positioning the Windows clock calendar panel under Windows 10.
Fixed issue that could potentially freeze Explorer when clicking on a system tray icon under Windows 10.
Fixed issue under Windows 10 where the Windows clock calendar might not pop up if DPI scaling was not set to 100%.
Folder type tabs in the Shelf were showing 'desktop.ini' if that file was present in the target folder.
Fixed issue were, for some obscure reason, retrieving an icon would cause an interrupt which, in turn, would cause the Shelf to repaint itself while still in the process of retrieving all the icons and generating the internal structure list. This in turn resulted in blank or unknown icons, with a single icon painted at the top left corner of the Shelf.

New in Winstep Xtreme 17.1 (Nov 28, 2017)

New Moon Phases module:
Did you know that the moon in the Southern hemisphere appears upside down from the point of view of someone in the Northern hemisphere (and vice versa, of course)? Yes? Ah, but did you know that the moon wobbles as it orbits the earth, and that it's never at the same distance from it?
Now you can witness all this happening in a beautiful realistic animation using the new Moon Calendar: press the Play button and time will accelerate to a rate of roughly 3 days per second.
Click any day in the calendar and the moon will smoothly rotate to show you the phase, tilt and relative distance from earth at that particular time. You can also click the Forward and Back buttons to go back and forth one day at a time, or the Rewind button whenever you wish to return to the current day.
Clicking the Information button will let you know when the moon raises and sets on that day, where in the sky it is, and much more! Clicking the Time button will allow you to get that same information accurate to the hour and minute.
When the information panel is up you can also click on the little moons to be taken to the day where the moon is at the chosen phase.
For those into the mystical side of life, clicking the Zodiac button rotates the calendar to show you which zodiacal sign the moon is on in that particular day:
Like all other modules, the new Moon Phases module is available in two syles: for the moon module these are either Realistic or Simple.
User location is automatically retrieved using the same GeoIP technology employed by the Weather module. You can also type in your current latitude and longitude coordinates if you want, of course.
These coordinates are crucial to accurately calculate the tilt and position of the moon in the sky at any given time, as well as other important information.
There are plenty of customization options, including the ability to use of alternate full moon images as well as support for animated icons.
Shelf smooth scrolling:
The Shelf (tabbed dock) supports multiple rows of icons. Up until now scrolling the Shelf meant a new icon row would instantly replace the previous row. Now the icons smoothly scroll up and down (but speeding up to keep up with you if necessary).
The devil is in the details. Sometimes it's not the feature itself that makes you go 'Ahhhh' but how much attention to detail is given to it.
Parent dock magnification and independent sub-dock settings:
Parent docks can now be made to magnify normally even when sub-docks are open and each sub-dock can have its own settings, independent from those of the parent dock (e.g.; icon size, transparency, theme, effects, etc...)
Both features are optional and can be turned on or off in the Sub-Docks dialog of each dock (Behavior tab of the Dock Properties dialog).
More Alarm Manager options:
Weekly alarms can now also be scheduled to run every (x) weeks only (for instance, only every other Wednesday) and the ESC key can be modified to act like Snooze instead of killing an alarm (useful for those heavy sleepers would would automatically press ESC and go right back to sleep).
Multi-monitor Reserve Screen Space:
NextSTART can now create user-defined reserved screen areas on monitors other than the primary. The Reserve Screen Space function is useful to prevent maximized applications from overlapping other screen objects, such as NextSTART hotspot buttons, for instance.
Added protection against problematic 3rd party MP3 codecs and audio filters:
Version 16.12 replaced the previous low quality WAV based voice packs with high quality MP3 audio files. These voice packs are used by the clock module to announce the time, the email checker module to announce the arrival of new messages, and the battery module to report power events.
Soon after, Winstep began receiving sporadic reports of crashes and weird behavior that could not be reliably reproduced. After a long and difficult diagnosis process it was possible to conclude that the problems were being caused by some bad 3rd party MP3 decoders and/or audio filters that run inside the Winstep application process space whenever it played an MP3 audio file. The problematic decoder DLLs would silently corrupt memory belonging to the Winstep application, eventually leading to a crash and/or some very strange behavior.
Since Winstep cannot fix 3rd party code - and given the prevalence of many different free codec packs such as K-Lite on the Internet, with no way to know which are good and which are bad - the only solution was to isolate the main application from all of them. As such, media files are now played by WsMMPlay.exe. This small Winstep utility will play audio files on demand and exit shortly after, thus keeping the main application safe from the potential problems caused by bad codecs and audio filters.
Improvements to the update process:
In a goal to make updating less intrusive, the Setup wizard is no longer shown. Previously you got the new update notification prompt, download progress bar, UAC prompt before running the Setup wizard and then a handful of Setup pages which you had to click through. Things now will be exactly the same up until the UAC prompt, but after that all you should see is an installation progress bar and next thing you know you're already running the updated version.
Many other performance and stability improvements!

New in Winstep Xtreme 16.12.1191 (Jan 16, 2017)

Highlighted Features:
New high-quality English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish Voice Packs.
Winstep Update Manager improvements.
When changing the currently selected language in Preferences, if a voice pack in the selected language exists, it will be automatically selected as well.
New Calendar module.
More Alarm Manager options plus integration with the new Calendar module.
Email Checker module now displays number of unread messages on the icon itself.
New Digital desktop clock module.
Integration of the new Calendar module with the clock module.
Changed the 'Bounce' effect to be more similar to the Mac OSX original and gave it user-adjustable duration and magnitude settings like the other effects.
Fixed issue where the MSI Installer could pop up when resolving special shortcuts.
Fixed several z-order issues.
Improved response to and correct detection of WIN+D (Show Desktop).
Minimized windows no longer loose their 'snap to edge' status when restored from a Winstep application.
Added an 'Easy' mode to the Performance settings dialog so the 'basic' slider values now perform a linear escalation as originally intended. The user can still 'pick and choose' using the Advanced dialog.
Optimized performance of the 'Smooth Meters' setting which now also affects bar-graphs and multi-state images in desktop modules for a smoother experience.
New 'Enable smooth text scrolling' setting added to the Performance dialog, enabling pixel-by-pixel scrolling of text in desktop modules.
WorkShelf complete change log:
Replaced the Female and Male Clock and Email Checker Voices with the new higher quality versions also used to report Battery power events.
Added new 'Activate if hidden when an application in the dock requests attention' setting to the Activation Settings dialog of the dock's Behavior tab. Enabled by default, this setting controls whether the dock should pop up if hidden when an application with an icon in the dock starts flashing to get your attention.
The Email Checker module is now able to use speech to report more than 59 new messages (up to 1 million).
The Email Checker module now displays the number of new messages in the icon itself by default. This can be prevented by disabling the 'Show number of messages in the icon' setting in the Email Checker Settings dialog.
The Email Checker now checks for new mail immediately after changing settings in the Email Checker Settings dialog, unless automatic checking has been disabled.
Apparently some Registry Cleanners would sometimes delete Winstep uninstall information from the Windows Registry, which resulted in the user being unable to uninstall the software normally and in him being unable to update normally (trying to install an update via the Winstep Update Manager would result in an error message being displayed instead). Before downloading an upgrade the Winstep Update Manager now checks the Windows Registry for the existence of this critical uninstall section and, if it has been deleted, downloads and installs the full version instead of the smaller upgrade pack. Current settings, etc, are all preserved regardless.
Module previews in the Module settings dialogs of Preferences now instantly reflect the proper background icons specified by the user via the 'Change Icon' dialog. Previously the Module Settings dialogs were not reflecting changes made to the background icons of modules until those changes were made effective either by pressing the Apply or Ok button in Preferences.
Improved what happens when the user makes changes to a module in Preferences and then opens the Settings dialog for that module via the right click context menu while Preferences is still open.
The automatic scaling of the Net Meter module has been changed to progress from 10 Kbit to 100 Kbit, 1 Mbit, 10 Mbits, 100 Mbits, 1 Gbit, 10 Gbits, etc...
Optimized the performance of updating the meter modules (CPU, Net, RAM) in gauge style when smooth meters is enabled (which is by default).
If the Smooth Meters option is enabled (it is by default), bar graphs (including those made by multi-state images) in desktop modules now increase and decrease smoothly, instead of abruptly updating to a new size every second like before.
Added new Calendar module. Like all other modules it is available in two user-selectable styles: the classic iCal slanted look, and a vertical Flip Calendar look. Both styles can be colorized, with separate settings for the text color of the Month, Weekday and Day. These options make using customized calendar icon backgrounds very easy. The user can also select what happens when he clicks on the calendar icon: the module can either display a full blown calendar or launch a user-defined calendar application.
Added desktop version of the new calendar module. Unlike the other modules that display the iconic version of the module when no theme has been assigned to it, the defaults are full blown calendars matching the currently selected style (iCal or Flip calendar).
Extensive re-organization and fine-tuning of all module related code, both to improve performance as well as to make it even easier to add new modules in the future.
All desktop modules now support overlay bitmaps (previously only the Net, CPU, RAM and Wanda desktop modules did). All modules now also support 'ticker' (scrolling text) when the text information does not fit in the available space. Since the vast majority of the code is now shared between modules, adding new features to one automatically adds it to all the others. In part because of this, it also became a lot easier to add more types of text information to existing modules (for instance, the clock module can now support separate hour, minute and second text fields, making it easier to make digital desktop clock themes). All these improvements are, unfortunately, still greatly dependent on the upcoming release of the Winstep Theme Builder. Backward compatibility with older themes has been maintained, but new themes will not display properly on older versions.
Made some cosmetic changes to the banner of the Alarm Manager dialog.
Made some cosmetic changes to the Alarm Reminder in LCD Mode to better keep with the LCD theme: removed the degrees character from the temperature, added automatic replacement of foreign characters with western equivalent for the days of the week.
Added 'Yearly' option to the clock Alarms - ideal to be reminded of birthdays and anniversaries.
The desktop version of the Calendar module is now tied to the Clock Alarms. Days with clock alarm events are marked on the calendar, clicking a day allows you to edit/delete an existing alarm or add a new alarm. Clicking the date at the top takes you back to the current day.
Added new 'Enable smooth text scrolling' setting to the Performance dialog. Turning this option on enables smooth pixel-by-pixel text scrolling on desktop meters. The drawback is that a module is then updated four times faster than before.
Yahoo changed the conditions of access to their Weather API, which caused the Yahoo backup weather feed to stop working. Restored this feed by using an alternate URL.
Added two new skinning settings for bar graphs in desktop meter modules (CPU, Net, RAM) that allow the skinner to define start and end margins in the bar bitmap. This allows, for instance, bars with curved start and end points, something that previously could only be accomplished by using multi-state images. Together with the Smooth Meters setting now also affecting bar graphs, this allows for bar graphs with really smooth variations.
The user can now define the units used to scale graphs manually in the Net Meter modules as either Bytes, KB, MB, Kbits or Mbits.
If the Weather Module Settings dialog is open and a weather check is performed in the mean time, the information in the dialog is now updated too.
METAR Weather information is now retrieved directly from a raw data NOAA server.
Added 'From Now, On the Hour, Quarter Past, Half Past, Quarter Till' options to the 'Every x hours' daily clock alarm schedule.
Response to the user pressing WIN+D is now almost instantaneous (before, the dock might momentarily flicker in and out of view).
'Restore Wallpaper' thumbnails now transition from wallpaper to wallpaper, when the Windows wallpaper slide-show is active, without first reverting to the general icon.
WIN+D (Show Desktop) detection is now much more reliable. Microsoft deliberately did not provide a method to know when WIN+D just became active. Knowing when this happens is essential to prevent docks, etc, from hiding together with all other windows. The previous work-around method to detect WIN+D could sometimes falsely assume WIN+D was active if the user clicked on the desktop and no other windows were visible at the time. The changes applied to deal with (the falsely detected) WIN+D would then make docks set to always on top or always on bottom temporarily lose their z-order status.
Added 'Apply Wallpaper' option to a theme's context menu in the Shelf Themes tab. Allows you to preview by thumbnail - and apply - the wallpaper associated with that theme.
Under Windows 7 and later, if Desktop Composition is enabled the iconic window thumbnail extractor will use the DWM instead of PrintWindow to get a still thumbnail. This achieves success in most cases where PrintWindow would fail.
The 'Busy' animation is now more responsive when starting up, restoring and backing up settings.
The Weather and Email module now refresh automatically immediately after restoring old settings.
The 'Get Weather' button in the weather Module Settings dialog now bypasses the current weather information cache and stores a diagnostics 'Weather.log' file in the Winstep user data folder.
The clock module is now able to announce the time using the proper format for the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German.
The email module is now able to count incoming messages using the proper format for the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German.
Added new English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German voice packs with high quality voices and all the words required to properly announce the time and count messages in these languages.
The Winstep Update Manager is now able to look for and update voice packs as well. By default the application only comes with English male and female voices, but if other voices packs are available in the user's own language, the Winstep Update Manager will notify the user and download them right after installation.
When changing the currently selected language in Preferences, if a voice pack in the selected language exists, it will be automatically selected as well.
Added a 'Open Folder' button in the Sounds tab of Preferences to show the folder containing the files for the currently selected Voice theme/pack.
Dock icon labels now bounce up and down with the icon for effects such as jump, bounce, etc...
Changed the Bounce effect so it's a bit more similar to the original Mac OSX bounce effect. Like the other effects, it now also has settings for fine-tuning magnitude and duration.
Added a 'Magnify Settings' button to the Effects tab of a Dock Properties dialog, which allows changing settings for this effect directly when combined with other effects.
Improved icon reflection rendering performance for themes such as KTEK-4D1 where icon reflections are 'cropped' to the background tile.
Clicking the clock module will now open the pop-up version of the Calendar module by default. Added new 'Show Windows calendar' setting to the Clock Settings panel to make the clock show the Windows calendar as before.
Modified the Performance Settings dialog so the 'basic' slider values now perform a linear escalation as originally intended. The user can still 'pick and choose' in the Advanced dialog.
Added smooth up and down scrolling to the Dock & Shelves tab in Preferences, as the previous abrupt 'row jump' offered very poor visual feedback.
None of the settings in the Alarm Settings dialog (Initial Volume, Final Volume, LCD Style color, etc...) were being saved between sessions.
Clicking the Default button in the METAR Server Settings dialog of the Weather module was restoring the previous, no longer working, NOAA weather link and search string.
Because of the new aviationweather.gov METAR information page format, a non-working METAR code (i.e.; invalid code or no METAR information for that code) was not being recognized as such, and current weather conditions would be displayed as N/A (Not Available).
Changing a Windows color scheme or applying a new WindowBlinds theme was not updating the background color of slider controls.
The Battery module was logging a 'Overload! Battery critical' power event when the battery hardware signaled imminent failure during a power outage before the soft 'critical battery' threshold was reached. This also prevented entering and exiting of low power states from being logged. A 'Critical Battery' event is now logged instead.
Changing the background image of a module via the Item Properties dialog was not refreshing that module's image on every dock and Shelf as it should.
The Wanda 'Hide/Show Systray Icon' right-click context menu option was not doing anything.
Fixed bug with the easeInExpo and easeInOutExpo easings which would return the wrong value for t=0.
In very specific circumstances the Weather module could display a moon icon during the day.
Fixed memory leak that would happen if the caching of desktop module images was disabled in Performance Settings dialog and the Wanda desktop module was open.
If the user opened a dialog via a Always On Top dock, the dialog could still appear behind the dock even though the it was also set as 'always on top'.
If the user opened a dialog via a Always On Top dock, any secondary dialogs would appear behind the parent dialog.
Clicking the Battery icon on a always on top dock would make the Battery Information dialog appear behind the dock.
When resolving shortcuts, if the shortcut had never been used before a MSI dialog would sometimes popup asking to install files. Normally letting MSI complete the install would fix the problem, but not always. This issue has been fixed and the MSI dialog should no longer pop up when resolving shortcuts.
Minimized windows would lose their 'snap to edge' status when restored from the Winstep application.
Deleting the last dock in the Dock & Shelves tab of Preferences was erasing the dock's preview image.
A newly created dock could use the settings of a disabled dock for initial icon size and position instead of the settings of the last active dock created.
The Windows 7 style balloon tooltip arrow was not properly centered on desktop modules.
Full screen Adobe Flash videos were triggering a WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message which caused a reset of the reserved screen areas and subsequent screen flickering.
The backup overwrite prompt appeared twice.
Running indicators on docks could take up to a second to refresh after uncollapsing/un-hiding a dock.
When changing the language in WorkShelf, the wrong language could be applied to NextSTART.
After downloading and installing an updated language file via the Winstep Update Manager, the wrong language could be applied to the application.
URLs and mail support addresses were still pointing to the old Proxma AG partner website in the German language file.
Fixed extremelly annoying z-order bug that normally would only happen if a dock was at the bottom of the screen right above the taskbar. Conditions to trigger were: the user would be working on window A and would move the mouse pointer down to the taskbar, thus travelling across the dock, to give focus to window B. The user would click the relevant button in the taskbar and window B got the focus. As the user moved the mouse pointer to window B, it would travel across the dock again which would then (wrongly) bring window A to the top of the z-order (thus above window B).
If a dock was docked to the top of the screen with the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting enabled, the distance between the top screen edge and the top edge of the dock might not be enough to show some of the effects without the icons becoming partially cropped at the top.
Fixed issue that could cause the View Change Log parser to enter an infinite loop and hang the application.
Fixed some issues with the opacity of the icon reflection as icons in the dock moved up and down.
Fixed some cropping issues with icon reflections in the dock.
The movement of the icon drop shadow in combination with the Bounce effect was not correct.
The Recycler style drag & drop animation was not activating.
A change to the 'Do not display confirmation when deleting' setting in the Delete Confirmation dialog itself might not be immediately reflected in the Recycler Settings dialog.
Changing the 'Cache animated icons using original resolution' setting in the Performance Settings Advanced dialog was not causing a memory usage report to be displayed.
NextSTART complete change log:
Apparently some Registry Cleanners would sometimes delete Winstep uninstall information from the Windows Registry, which resulted in the user being unable to uninstall the software normally and in him being unable to update normally (trying to install an update via the Winstep Update Manager would result in an error message being displayed instead). Before downloading an upgrade the Winstep Update Manager now checks the Windows Registry for the existence of this critical uninstall section and, if it has been deleted, downloads and installs the full version instead of the smaller upgrade pack. Current settings, etc, are all preserved regardless.
Response to the user pressing WIN+D is now almost instantaneous (before, the taskbar might momentarily flicker in and out of view).
WIN+D (Show Desktop) detection is now much more reliable. Microsoft deliberately did not provide a method to know when WIN+D just became active. Knowing when this happens is essential to prevent the taskbar, hotspot buttons, etc, from hiding together with all other windows. The previous work-around method to detect WIN+D could sometimes falsely assume WIN+D was active if the user clicked on the desktop and no other windows were visible at the time. The changes applied to deal with (the falsely detected) WIN+D would then make hotspot buttons or a taskbar set to always on top to temporarily lose their z-order status.
Added support for capturing the new WorkShelf Calendar desktop module to the taskbar.
Settings should now load a bit faster, increasing startup and theme loading performance.
The 'Busy' animation is now more responsive when starting up, restoring and backing up settings.
Changing a Windows color scheme or applying a new WindowBlinds theme was not updating the background color of slider controls.
Fixed bug with the easeInExpo and easeInOutExpo easings which would return the wrong value for t=0.
When resolving shortcuts, if the shortcut had never been used before a MSI dialog would sometimes popup asking to install files. Normally letting MSI complete the install would fix the problem, but not always. This issue has been fixed and the MSI dialog should no longer pop up when resolving shortcuts.
Minimized windows would lose their 'snap to edge' status when restored from the Winstep application.
Full screen Adobe Flash videos were triggering a WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message which caused a reset of the reserved screen areas and subsequent screen flickering.
Themes with sub-themes were not being properly backed up or restored.
The backup overwrite prompt appeared twice.
When changing the language in NextSTART, the wrong language could be applied to WorkShelf.
After downloading and installing an updated language file via the Winstep Update Manager, the wrong language could be applied to the application.
URLs and mail support addresses were still pointing to the old Proxma AG partner website in the German language file.
Fixed issue that could cause the View Change Log parser to enter an infinite loop and hang the application.

New in Winstep Xtreme 16.09.0805 (Oct 7, 2016)

Highlighted Features:
Weather module's NOAA/METAR feed is now working again after termination of the original feed by NOAA earlier this month.
WorkShelf v16.9 complete change log:
Updated Brazilian language file.
Added a 'View Change Log' button to the Version Information dialog (which opens when you click the version number in the top right corner of the About tab in Preferences). Clicking the button opens another dialog which interfaces with the history files and makes it easier to see the additions and bug fixes in each release.
Added a 'Check Internet Connection' button to the Troubleshooting dialog in Preferences, to help diagnose Internet communication problems.
The Shelf icon cache is no longer destroyed when changing drive media or adding/removing drives.
After more than a decade, NOAA discontinued the web site from where METAR information was retrieved. Updated URLs and parsing code so METAR information is now successfuly retrieved from www.aviationweather.gov.
The Battery module 'Overlap information on battery icon' setting can now be independently set for vertical and horizontal styles.
Some applications (such as Firefox or UWP apps) were wrongly being identified as full screen when maximized on monitors without a taskbar or with a auto-hide taskbar. This caused screen edge bumps, etc, to be temporarily ignored (edge bumps are disabled so they do not activate accidentally when the user is playing a full screen game, for instance).
Fixed a couple of instances where the CD Control icon or drive icons in a Drives tab of the Shelf might not be properly updated after a media or drive change.
The 'Hide for maximized applications' setting was also triggering the dock to hide if you clicked on the Desktop.
Changes to the default Weather feed source URLs were not being applied until weather cache information became stale.
The Email Checker failed on IMAP servers that sent a CAPABILITY response just after login or didn't add OK to the STATUS command response.
NextSTART v16.9 complete change log:
Updated Brazilian language file.
Added a 'View Change Log' button to the Version Information dialog (which opens when you click the version number in the top right corner of the About tab in Preferences). Clicking the button opens another dialog which interfaces with the history files and makes it easier to see the additions and bug fixes in each release.
Some applications (such as Firefox or UWP apps) were wrongly being identified as full screen when maximized on monitors without a taskbar or with a auto-hide taskbar. This caused screen edge bumps, etc, to be temporarily ignored (edge bumps are disabled so they do not activate accidentally when the user is playing a full screen game, for instance).
Pressing OK in the Menu Editor was discarding any changes made to the currently selected item after selecting it for the first time.

New in Winstep Xtreme 16.05.1145 (May 29, 2016)

Updated Russian language file.
File format of screenshots taken by the 'Capture Desktop' internal command can now be set as either JPG or PNG.
Filled histogram colors used for the CPU, Net and RAM Meter icon modules are now a bit transparent so the background of the icon can still be seen.
URLs dragged from all browsers should now use the web page title for the item's label instead of the actual URL domain address.
Added new 'Overlap information on battery icon' option to the battery module, enabled by default. Controls whether the AC Power symbol, charge percentage and battery runtime values are drawn on top of the battery icon or next to it. This allows using customized multi-state battery images that wouldn't look good with battery information overlapping the battery image.
The 'Most Active Programs', 'Power Events Log' and 'Battery Information' dialogs now show a button on the taskbar.
Since it's global, also added the 'Do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' setting to the More Options dialog in the General tab of Preferences. Also renamed the dialog from 'Advanced Settings' to 'More Options' for consistency with the button that invokes it.
The Animation Speed slider in a dock Auto-Hide Settings dialog is now disabled if the auto-hide animation is set to No Animation.
Added new 'Auto Backup Settings' internal command. Intended to be used with the built-in Alarm Manager to make automatic scheduled backups, it makes a backup of the application's settings without prompting the user for a filename. It creates the filename based on the current date and time and stores the backup in the last used backup folder (or C:\Users\Public\Documents\WinStep\Backup\ by default). It also notifies NextSTART (if it's currently running) to make an automatic backup at the same time.
The battery in the Battery Information dialog now displays the style and settings currently selected by the user and glows with the dominant color of the battery image.
The 'Colorize low and critical battery states' battery module setting now also properly colorizes customized multi-state battery images.
Added new alternative 'Hue Shift' colorization method which allows color information to be preserved and whites to remain white.
Iconic (not skinned) desktop modules are no longer colorized.
Changed the Hue shift colorization algorithm to one that is more accurate than Microsoft's solution. This can affect colorization of the Battery Monitor and Wanda fish modules.
The 'Edge Swipe Settings' buttons in the Behavior tab of the Shelf and Dock Properties panels are now grayed out if the user is using edge bumps instead of edge swipes to activate the dock/Shelf.
A theme validation is now performed when Restoring settings from a previous backup, so the user doesn't end up with a blank theme if the theme used at the time of the backup no longer exists.
Added 'Most Active Programs' button to the CPU module settings dialog, to make this feature more visible.
The Colorize settings are now also directly available in the Themes tab by sliding the UI with the arrow. This allows quick preview of colorization changes without having to constantly open and close the Colorization Settings dialog.
The Winstep Update Manager now uses the currently selected settings when you click the 'Check for Updates' button in the Advanced tab of Preferences.
Increased the interpolation quality used to render dock backgrounds.
The 'Minimize to dock' and 'Combine dock icons with running applications' settings are now only available when 'Show running applications in this dock' is selected.
Improved the color hot-track algorithm so it also takes into account the average background color when it can't calculate a proper dominant color.
A black or gray scale tint color now grayscales the bitmap for both the Tint and Hue shift colorizing modes.
Context menus are now also colorized.
Tweaked the vertical position of the text in the Shelf tabs when running under high-DPI settings.
Added a new 'Colorize text' option to the Color Settings, enabled by default. Text can now be optionally colorized as well. Disabling this option allows the user to colorize a theme but still be able to tweak text colors manually via the theme 'Fonts' dialog.
If Theme Integration is on, colorizing a theme in WorkShelf will now also colorize the theme in NextSTART and vice-versa.
Adjusted the disposition of the objects in the preview of the Themes tab to better accomodate high DPI displays.
Replaced the Shelf and dock images used in the Docks & Shelves tab in Preferences so they can scale up properly on high DPI displays.
Added 'Flip Dock Background' option to the Appearence sub-menu of the dock's right-click context menu. Equivalent to toggling the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting but with immediate effect.
Added 'Show Container' and 'Browse Container' options to the right-click context menu of the 'Restore Wallpaper' internal command. Allows you to open or browse the folder where the Windows wallpaper is stored.
Fixed malformed request to GeoIP location server that caused GeoIP location to stop working for a week after 2016/03/17.
The 'Lookup IP address' internal command would fail if the GeoIP information was not already in the cache.
The dock could crop the number of visible tray icons in grouped mode when changing the icon size of the dock.
Pseudo-3D dock backgrounds like the Leopard theme no longer appear heavilly distorted at certain icon/icon reflection sizes.
The 'Capture Desktop Settings' dialog, when invoked from a right click context menu, was not saving the settings to the proper location.
The Shelf could auto-hide while a item delete confirmation dialog was still on screen if the user moved the mouse pointer over the Shelf.
If the auto-hide delay was too short, the Shelf could auto-hide while it was still performing unrelated animations such as shifting icons after deleting an item, etc...
Synchronization of the system clock with the Internet Time Servers failed if the regional settings for the SYSTEM account (used by the Winstep Helper Service) used a difference decimal point character than the user account under which the application run (e.g.; "123,4" instead of "123.4" or vice-versa).
Some routines were still using bilinear instead of bicubic transformations for rescaling bitmaps, which caused the bitmaps to look blurrier than they should.
WorkShelf would crash if a dock was set to auto-hide when selecting a new theme in the Dock Properties dialog and the user clicked outside the Dock Properties window (which would cause the dock to hide) and then on the themes list.
Certain dock backgrounds could cause visual glitches when mousing over near the position of a dock that was hidden into a screen edge.
A dock set to hide/collapse automatically after launching an application (or a sub-dock set to close automatically after launching an application) would fail to do so if the item being launched required admin privileges (i.e.; UAC prompt).
Always on top docks set to auto-hide for maximized applications will now only do so if they are not reserving screen space (maximized applications would not be overlapped by the dock in this case) and will only auto-hide for full screen applications.
The preview of the Destop Module Battery Monitor on the Modules tab of Preferences would show a disabled battery if the battery module was not currently in use.
Fixed some Shelf tab width issues that could occur if the tab font size was too large to fit.
Drag & Drop of URLs was not working with certain browsers (e.g.; Waterfox) that did not supply the ANSI UniformResourceLocator format. ANSI and Unicode formats are now correctly accepted.
Changing units of the weather module from C to F or vice-versa only became effective after the cached weather information became stale and the weather information was refreshed.
Sub-dock indicators were overlapping other icons and causing visual glitches if the icon spacing was less than 8 pixels.
The 'Popup delay' slider in the Activation Settings dialog of the Dock Properties Behavior tab appeared enabled even if 'Bring dock forward on mouseover' was not selected.
With very short auto-hide delays, or under certain circunstances when a dock was set to auto-hide for maximized applications, a dock could auto-hide in the middle of a resize/move animation, which would cause it to glitch.
Clicking an icon to open an in-Shelf sub-dock could cause a persistent blank white box to appear if in-shelf sub-docks were set to open on mouse over and the sub-dock had started playing the open animation just prior to the click.
Changing an icon for a module via drag & drop or by righ-clicking the module was not updating the icon in the Desktop version of the module.
The Winstep Update Manager always failed to download updates with a 'file size mimatch' error on East Asian systems.
A sub-dock opening animation would briefly flash the full glass blur region at the begining if the 'Aero Glass Blur' effect was enabled.
The dock would keep bouncing up and down if 'Auto hide for maximized applications' was enabled and the user tried to drag a shortcut from a maximized window into the dock.
The 'Colorize low and critical battery states' battery module setting was not 'sticking' between restarts of the application.
The 'Aero Glass' (non-Windows 10) balloon tooltip style was blurring the tooltip window background on Windows 10 systems.
Under certain circumstances, if a theme's original font style did not exist on the system, text width could be calculated as zero and cause visual glitches.
Winstep applications should now display the high-resolution icon in Explorer on high-DPI/large icon systems.
Docks should now be a bit less 'jittery' when inserting items into them via drag & drop.
A Shelf attached to the top screen edge with the tabs set to appear at the top of the Shelf, was not hiding the tabs properly when collapsed if the 'Hide tabs' setting was enabled.
The 'Auto Hide at Startup' option could sometimes fail to hide the dock, leaving it visible and in an unresponsive state until you activated it.
It was very easy (and very annoying!) to accidentally activate a dock at the bottom of the screen via an edge bump when going for the last option in a context menu. This could make the dock cover the menu(s). Edge bumps are now ignored if the mouse pointer is over a menu.
Getting the current wallpaper to use as the background in certain dialogs with result previews could sometimes fail under Windows 8.x and 10. This could cause changes in previews to overwrite instead of replacing each other (Dock Icon Spacing and Dock Transparency dialogs, for instance).
The 'Colorize with dominant color of desktop background' feature could stop working properly after going to the Themes tab in Preferences.
Shelf tab overlay bitmaps (used in the DarkTech theme, for instance) were not obeying the user specified transparency settings.
The Themes tab in Preferences, unlike the Themes tab in a dock Properties dialog, was unable to display RK Launcher Nexus themes.
Fixed slow memory leak in the Shelf that occured whenever an icon in the Global icon cache was changed or a Shelf tab was deleted.
'Colorize with the dominant color of the desktop background' now works properly with the Windows 7 wallpaper slideshow.
Fixed a couple of visual glitches with the DarkTech, Evolve and Windows 7 Xtreme default themes on systems running with high-DPI settings.
Fixed another memory leak that occured when switching tabs in the Shelf if one of the tabs contained Winstep modules.
The Battery Monitor Event Actions dialog would not properly display the background image if the Low Battery alarm was set to 'Do Nothing' and the Critical Battery alarm was set to something other than 'Do Nothing'.
Fixed some issues displaying and correctly applying RK Launcher dock backgrounds in the Themes tab of Preferences.
Closing Preferences could interfere with the Windows wallpaper slideshow feature if Windows changed the wallpaper while the Preferences window was still open.
Fixed a few issues with Theme Integration between NextSTART and WorkShelf.
The application crashed if a context menu got repainted while a thumbnail preview of a document in the menu was being shown.
NextSTART v16.5 complete change log:
Updated Russian language file.
File format of screenshots taken by the 'Capture Desktop' internal command can now be set as either JPG or PNG.
Deleted/Removed Windows Quick Launch shortcuts are now automatically removed from the NextSTART Quicklaunch hotspots/taskbar too.
Added 'Delete Quick Launch Shortcut' option to the right click context menu of Quick Launch hotspots pointing to Windows Quick Launch items.
URLs dragged from all browsers should now use the web page title for the item's label instead of the actual URL domain address.
Added new 'Auto Backup Settings' internal command. Intended to be used with WorkShelf's built-in Alarm Manager to make automatic scheduled backups, it makes a backup of the application's settings without prompting the user for a filename. It creates the filename based on the current date and time and stores the backup in the last used backup folder (or C:\Users\Public\Documents\WinStep\Backup\ by default). When used in NextSTART it also notifies WorkShelf (if it's currently running) to make an automatic backup at the same time.
Added new alternative 'Hue Shift' colorization method which allows color information to be preserved and whites to remain white.
Grouped task icons on the NextSTART taskbar now always display the number of running instances on the icon itself instead of on the icon label.
The NextSTART taskbar is now scaled up properly on high DPI systems. Automatic DPI scaling can be disabled in the Taskbar tab of NextSTART Preferences.
Fine tuned some visual aspects related to the NextSTART taskbar and the new high DPI settings.
Improved the rendering quality used for scaling up NextSTART taskbar related bitmaps.
The newly added high-DPI support for the NextSTART taskbar increased the probability of the taskbar not being large enough to hold all the objects in it (Start Button + Quick Launch icons + Tasklist + WorkShelf modules + System Tray). This could create a situation where the Quick Launch icons would overlap other objects on the taskbar. To greatly aleviate this problem, the size of Quick Launch icons is now automatically reduced, when necessary, so everything fits.
Limiting the size of the Quick Launch area now also works for vertical taskbars and multi-row Quick Launch sections.
The Colorize settings are now also directly available in the Themes tab by sliding the UI with the arrow. This allows quick preview of colorization changes without having to constantly open and close the Colorization Settings dialog.
The Winstep Update Manager now uses the currently selected settings when you click the 'Check for Updates' button in the Advanced tab of Preferences.
Improved the color hot-track algorithm so it also takes into account the average background color when it can't calculate a proper dominant color.
A black or gray scale tint color now grayscales the bitmap for both the Tint and Hue shift colorizing modes.
Added a new 'Colorize text' option to the Color Settings, enabled by default. Text can now be optionally colorized as well. Disabling this option allows the user to colorize a theme but still be able to tweak text colors manually via the theme 'Fonts' dialog.
If Theme Integration is on, colorizing a theme in NextSTART will now also colorize the theme in WorkShelf and vice-versa.
The list of available NextSTART menus in the Item Properties Editor was displaying temporary system menus as well as the user defined menus.
It was not possible to change the drive letter assigned to a CD Control internal command in the Item Properties Editor.
NextSTART was still using the old 'Close CD-ROM x: Door' and 'Open CD-ROM x: Door' internal commands instead of the new 'CD Control x:' in the default Disk sub-menu.
NextSTART would crash as soon as you inserted media on a CD-ROM drive or inserted a thumb drive if the Quick Launch section in the taskbar was disabled.
Drag & Drop of URLs was not working with certain browsers (e.g.; Waterfox) that did not supply the ANSI UniformResourceLocator format. ANSI and Unicode formats are now correctly accepted.
To prevent interfering with other edge bump activations, the taskbar no longer shows live window previews if the mouse pointer is above a task button but also at the very edge of the screen the taskbar is attached to.
The Winstep Update Manager always failed to download updates with a 'file size mimatch' error on East Asian systems.
Under certain circumstances, if a theme's original font style did not exist on the system, text width could be calculated as zero and cause visual glitches.
Fixed lots of visual glitches with old themes.
An invisible menu could get 'stuck' in memory and cause NextSTART to constantly steal focus from other applications.
Under certain circunstances it would be impossible to resize the NextSTART taskbar back to one row of icons after resizing it up from a single row.
Winstep applications should now display the high-resolution icon in Explorer on high-DPI/large icon systems.
Getting the current wallpaper to use as the background in certain dialogs with result previews could sometimes fail under Windows 8.x and 10.
The 'Colorize with dominant color of desktop background' feature could stop working properly after going to the Themes tab in Preferences.
Hotspot buttons were not being properly colorized when the wallpaper changed and 'Colorize with dominant color of desktop background' was enabled.
'Colorize with the dominant color of the desktop background' now works properly with the Windows 7 wallpaper slideshow.
Fixed a couple of visual glitches with the DarkTech, Evolve and Windows 7 Xtreme default themes on systems running with high-DPI settings.
Closing Preferences could interfere with the Windows wallpaper slideshow feature if Windows changed the wallpaper while the Preferences window was still open.
Fixed a few issues with Theme Integration between NextSTART and WorkShelf.
The application crashed if a menu got repainted while a document thumbnail preview was being shown.

New in Winstep Xtreme 16.2 (Feb 12, 2016)

New Battery Monitor module:
Monitors your battery or UPS power status, provides useful information regarding the type and condition of your battery, logs power events, provides voice and sound notifications regarding battery status and can run 3rd party applications, execute internal commands (such as Hibernate or Sleep), or issue screen and audio warnings whenever the battery level reaches specified thresholds.
New clock module associated alarms to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs at specific times, once or periodically.
10 new amazing mouse-over, launch and attention effects:
Shake, Fade In, Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubbles, Plasma and Wormhole.
Flash and Jump are no longer restricted as attention and launch effects and can now also be used as mouse-over, launch and attention effects.
New Effects Panel to help you visualize, select and quickly configure all your mouse-over, launch and attention effects.
Improved the smoothness of docks when changing their size or moving to a new position. Inserting items into a dock is now much smoother too.
Added new 'fade-out the old/fade-in the new' effect to when the user changes an icon or a document thumbnail is rendered.
Winstep Xtreme just keeps getting faster:
The Aero Glass automatic background blur function is now about 8 times faster and uses 4 times less memory than before, with no visible loss of quality (Windows Vista/7 only plus 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).
Enable double caching of icons in the Performance Settings dialog of WorkShelf to increase the rendering speed of magnifying docks by up to 40%, at the cost of very little extra memory usage. A must-enable feature for users of systems with weaker CPUs who wish to enjoy the benefits of magnifying docks combined with other effects.
New settings added to the Performance Settings dialog to allow better user control of the quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.
New 'CD Control' and 'Lookup IP Address' internal commands.
The CD Control internal command allows you to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. If you have more than one drive installed in your system you can select which drive the command applies to via the Item Properties dialog.
The Lookup IP Address internal command returns the system's public IP address plus the user's current location and latitude/longitude coordinates, using Geo IP location technology.
Windows can now be minimized to the NextSTART taskbar and to docks if the dock is configured to show currently running applications.
Icons of running applications on the left side of a dock now also display the number of open instances.
The Weather module now uses the sunrise and sunset times provided by the weather feed - when available - to decide whether to display a Sun or a Moon icon.
Weather information is now immediately updated after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.
Automatic retrieval of the user's location by the Weather module when running for the first time has been vastly improved.
Left clicking a dock control icon now opens the Properties panel of that dock. Please note that there is a short delay while the dock makes sure the user is not trying to double-click the icon instead (which would hide/collapse the dock).
Reorganized the User Interface so related options are now usually grouped together, even though that meant repeating some settings throughout the UI.
Improved existing support for high-DPI systems. The size of dock icon labels now also reflect current DPI settings and scaled up desktop modules no longer appear so blurry. Below you can see the Before (v15.9, modules at the left) and After (v16.2) for desktop modules scaled up by 200%.
Improved User Interface integration with Windows 10 when running under this version of Windows.
The Winstep Update Manager can now hide specific updates so the user is not notified again until an even newer version comes along.
many other performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...
WorkShelf v16.2 complete change log:
Updated the French language file.
Updated Italian language file (incomplete).
Updated Spanish language file.
Updated Indonesian language file.
Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file (incomplete).
Greatly increased the odds of getting the user's correct location for the weather module based on IP address.
The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.
Updated the list of Internet Time Servers used by the clock module.
Desktop modules can now be scaled up as well as down (range is 10% to 200%, 100% being normal size).
Desktop modules are now scaled up automatically on high-DPI systems. This can be disabled by setting the 'Disable module scaling on high DPI settings' option in General -> More Options.
The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'. This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.
Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the dock.
Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).
Added backup Yahoo Weather feed to make up for the fact that the Google Weather feed is no longer available. Current available feeds are NOOA for current conditions plus Weather.
com, MSN Weather and Yahoo Weather for current/forecast conditions.
Updated the Net Statistics dialog which still showed the old UI.
Icon shifting to make room for new items being dragged into the dock is now a bit smoother than before.
Improved the smoothness of adding items to and re-arranging items in the dock.
Changes to the dock's position now make it smoothly 'slide in' into the new screen location instead of instantly jumping into place.
Added 'Auto-Detect Location' to the right click context menu of the Weather module, to update the user's current location based on his IP address.
Clock settings panel now shows previews for both the analog and digital clock style.
Added Alarms/Event Scheduling to the Clock Module. Alarms can now be created to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs/internal commands at specific times, once or periodically. Alarm events can optionally wake the computer up if Sleeping or Hibernating. Users can build their own MP3/WMA playlists or use existing M3U playlists for musical alarms, which also feature Snooze and Easy-Wake (sound volume increases with time) abilities.
Completely re-organized module's internal structures so it's much easier to add new modules in the future.
Added new battery/UPS monitor module. Module includes a vertical and an horizontal style and optionally display current battery charge and runtime (when available). Ability to log power events and display a warning or run an application/internal command on low and critical battery level events.
Changed the default 'Attention' effect from 'Flash' to 'Sonic Boom'.
Average CpU usage is now monitored and an alert displayed if WorkShelf consistently uses over 90% of one core for over 5 minutes.
Weather information is now cached for an hour to prevent hammering the weather servers unnecessarily.
If one of the weather feeds being used provides sunrise and sunset times, the weather module is now able to determine more accurately whether to display a Sun or Moon icon.
Icons of currently running applications on the left side of the dock now also display the number of instances when the 'Combine dock icons with running applications' and 'Group similar windows into a single icon' settings are both enabled.
The battery module in the dock/shelf now flashes for one second when the battery transitions from AC Power to On Battery.
Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.
Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default. The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.
Moved the 'Disable sounds for this module' and the 'Disable animations for this module' settings from the secondary More Options dialog to the Module tab in Preferences.
Added visual 'glass mode' (transparent battery) option to the battery module.
Added ability to disable the battery charging animation.
Added battery voice and sound notifications for battery events.
Desktop modules can now be scaled up without text and bitmaps/icons that have a higher resolution version becoming blured.
Added new 'CD Control' internal command. Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.
Reorganized the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties panel and added 'Activation Settings' and 'Auto-Hide Settings' panels.
You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.
The Weather module information is now automatically updated immediately after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.
Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.
Added a 'Capture Desktop Settings' configuration panel to the right click menu of the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.
Moved the customized 'Explosion animation' settings to the Recycler Module Settings panel.
Re-organized the Advanced Settings panel (Preferences -> General -> More Options).
Extended the maximum icon size of the swiming version of the Wanda desktop module from 128x128 to 256x256 pixels.
Added new 'Fade in' mouseover, launch and attention effect. All icons are semi-transparent and fade-in to opaque when you mouse over them, then fade out to semi-transparent as you mouse away. Initial transparency can be modified by changing normal icon transparency, otherwise it's 50%.
Floating mouseover icon labels for a Shelf set to display no labels below the icons now appear below the icon instead of outside the Shelf.
For security reasons the clock module now displays a warning dialog if the time difference between the system clock and the Time Server is larger than 15 hours, giving the user a choice to adjust the time anyway or otherwise cancelling the operation. Cancelling opens the Date and Time Windows dialog (so the user can manually change the date and time) as well as the Clock Module Settings Panel (so the user can alternatively disable automatic time synchronization).
Left clicking a dock's control icon now opens the Dock Properties dialog for that dock.
'Flash' and 'Jump' are now avaiable as Mouseover, Launch and Attention effects.
Switched the names of the 'Bounce' and 'Jump' effects.
Renamed the 'Fire' effect to 'Explode'.
Effects can now be selected and configured from the new 'Effects Panel'. The new panel allows you to visualize effects before applying them.
The Mouseover, Launch and Attention items of the main right click context menu for docks and the Shelf now open the new Effects Panel instead of displaying a menu with the effect names.
Added nine additional mouseover, launch and attention effects: Shake, Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubble, Plasma and Wormhole.
When the icon of an item is changed (either automatically when rendering document thumbnails or manually by the user via drag & drop or the Item Properties Editor) the old version now smoothly fades out while the new version fades into place.
Added new settings to the Performance vs. Memory Usage panel. The new settings allow the user to control quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.
To help troubleshooting, clicking the 'Test Voice' and 'Test Sounds' buttons in the Sound tab in Preferences now displays a warning dialog if the application has not detected a sound card in the system.
Major re-organization of the Position and Behavior tabs in the Properties panels of the Shelf and docks to fix a common complaint that some related settings were scattered throughout the UI, which made locating them and understanding their relation difficult. Related settings are now grouped together, even though this means some of them will now appear more than once at different places in the UI.
If the Weather.
com weather feed is down, the next resort is now the Yahoo feed, since it has sunrise and sunset times which the MSN feed does not. The MSN feed is now the last resort.
Renamed the 'Customize' button in the Themes tab to 'Fonts'.
Added a 'Fonts' button to the Appearence tab of the Shelf Properties dialog to open the Fonts Manager dialog. This allows the user to customize the text used in the Shelf for the current theme and should solve the problem of the user confusing this with the font settings used for the external label when the number of icon text lines in the Shelf was set to zero.
Clicking the Net Meter module now opens the 'Active Connections' panel instead of the Net Statistics panel.
Added new 'Lookup IP Address' internal command. Returns the public IP address as well as current location and latitude/longitude coordinates.
Added new 'Enable double caching of icons (speed boost)' option to the Performance Settings dialog in the Advanced tab of Preferences. Disabled by default, enable it to boost the rendering speed of magnifying docks by a factor of 2 or more, at the cost of a little bit more memory usage.
Added 'Manage Alarms' button to the General tab of Preferences.
Speeded up the initial construction of the semi-transparent blur regions by up to 4 times and cut their memory usage also by 4, without no noticeable visual drawbacks (Vista/7 only).
Colorization of Desktop Modules is now also applied to the non-advanced skinning version of the module (i.e.; if the current global theme does not have a skin for that particular module).
Dock icon labels are now also affected by the system's high-DPI settings.
The 'Most Active Programs History' dialog (accessible by right clicking the CPU Meter module) now also shows the second most active process and its CPU usage for each second of the last 5 minutes. The list can also be made to refresh automatically.
The 'Bring mouse forward when mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting makes the dock come on top of other windows when you bump the associated screen edge, regardless of it being docked or free floating. To help with annoying accidental activations, moving the mouse away from the dock after it comes forward now brings the window that previously had the focus to the foreground.
Icons now 'glow' when dragging an .ICO, .PNG or .TIF image over a dock or Shelf shortcut to give a visual cue to the user that dropping that image there will replace the target's shortcut icon.
Improved User Interface integration with Windows 10 when running under this version of Windows.
Live window preview thumbnails were not going away when the user moved the pointer off the dock.
The 'Disable reflections when dock is vertical' option would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.
Scaled desktop modules now auto-arrange properly on the desktop.
Scaled desktop modules can now automatically blur the semi-transparent areas as well (Vista/7 only).
When captured into the NextSTART taskbar as actual modules instead of icons, scaled desktop modules now reserve the correct space on the taskbar.
Right clicking on a live preview thumbnail would show a context menu, but the menu would close itself automatically almost immediately after.
No file context menu would open if you right-clicked a file of a 'Browse Container' or 'Browse' sub-menu.
The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Español' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.
Fixed bug that could cause the Net Meter module not to show all existing network adapters.
The Item Properties Editor panel was not automatically changing the icon when editing the path of Folder type items.
Fixed several issues with the dock becoming wonky when dragging items over it.
Double clicking just outside the left mini-tab when the Shelf was collapsed would cause it to open with an empty tab.
Menus displaying a list of voice and sound themes no longer display a question mark thumbnail.
Themes without a thumbnail now display a generic theme icon thumbnail instead of a question mark icon.
The attention effect was not activating for items pined to the dock when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.
The attention effect didn't affect the correct task icon when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.
On multi-monitor systems hiding or showing a dock would leave visible left-overs on the other monitor if the dock was attached to a common screen edge.
When double clicking a Shelf tab to fully expand the Shelf, the Shelf would only resize smoothly if attached to the bottom screen edge.
Native Nexus 'Tiles' skinning mode themes with the 'Zoom tiles when magnifying' option were not being rendered properly when the dock magnified.
The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.
Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.
The Winstep Update Manager was installing Nexus Ultimate Language Packs for Winstep Xtreme users.
The 'Always at the base of the icon' option for running indicators would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.
The clock module no longer syncs the time with the Internet Time Servers every time the application starts regardless of the check interval.
Dropping a shortcut into a Folder type Shelf tab was moving/copying the source file instead of the shortcut itself.
It wasn't possible to make a copy of a file via CTRL + Drop in a Folder type Shelf, the drop would simply be ignored.
The 'Use the menu theme currently active in NextSTART' setting did not have any effect until WorkShelf was restarted.
Changes made in the Clock Speech and Sound Settings dialog of the Clock Module Settings panel would still be effective even if the user later pressed Cancel in the Settings panel.
Multi-state images in desktop modules were displaying the wrong frame, i.
e.; they displayed frame 2 when frame 1 should be displayed and so on.
Maximized Google Chrome windows were being interpreted as full screen windows, which caused the application to automatically stop reacting to edge bumps (necessary so edge bumps are not accidentally activated when playing a full screen game, for instance).
The 'Combine dock icons with running applications' setting always became enabled after a restart of the application.
The Weather module was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.
The 24 hour or AM/PM format was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.
The digital clock module was displaying '12 AM' when it should display '12 PM'.
Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x.
The contents of an open weather forecast sub-dock were not being updated when weather information was refreshed.
Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).
Changes to the custom module icons were sometimes not being saved.
The Silent Period combo boxes were showing '12 AM' as '0 AM' and '12 PM' as '12 AM'.
Fixed problem that would cause desktop modules not to fade out completely with the opaque on mouseover function when the mouse pointer left the module.
A desktop module with opaque on mouseover enabled now starts fading back in immediately even if the mouse pointer hovers the module when it was still in the process of fading out.
The non-advanced skinned version of the desktop RAM Meter module was not being scaled.
The battery charge levels in the demo animations for the battery module were going to negative values if a language other than English was selected.
Fixed bug which would prevent some modules from using a customized bitmap without restarting the application if the bitmap had been updated but the filename remained the same.
Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead. This allows the user to specifically run customized shortcuts.
The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.
Sub-docks now complete the Launch animation (if any) before automatically closing.
The new 'smoothly move into place' feature, combined with the 'new item' animation, was causing items added to the end of the dock to momentarily appear outside the same.
Fixed some problems with the 'remove item from dock' animation if the mouse pointer was at the end or begining of the dock and the dock was magnifying.
Customizing the icon of a task item via drag & drop of an ICO or PNG image could apply the new icon to the wrong item under certain circumstances.
Fixed problem where the mouseover effect would 'stick' to an icon and keep playing even though the mouse pointer was no longer over the dock.
Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of system tray and task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion list. Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.
Weather module icon now flashes to give some feedback to the user even when the weather information is retrieved from the cache.
The Effect Settings buttons in the Dock Properties panel were configuring the wrong effect in Beta 2.
The charge and run time fonts of the battery module were not being scaled properly for high-DPI systems.
The Outline and Shadow text styles were not being scaled up properly on high-DPI systems.
Icons displayed in the 'Customize Task Icons', 'Task Exclusion List' and 'Thumbnail Exclusion List' dialogs are now scaled according to the system's current high DPI settings.
The background color of the tray icons lists shown in the 'Tray Exclusion List' dialog is now darker under Windows 10 so the white native Windows icons can be seen.
Fixed a handful of high-DPI related glitches.
Fixed bug in beta 2 that could cause the new CD Control internal command to block or report an error.
The 'Most Active Programs' list was logging an empty entry if all processes were using less than 1% CPU.
Fixed issue in which an item belonging to the same dock would not be deleted when dropped into the recycler module if the insertion point was before the module.
The clock module tooltip was using the current system settings to display the time in 24 or 12 hour format. It now uses the setting specified for the clock module.
The wrong icon could be displayed for a customized task items when selecting it from a DLL.
The attention effect would not play if an icon was currently displaying a persistent mouseover effect.
The icon labels of magnifying docks docked to the top where appearing at the wrong vertical position if the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting was enabled.
if the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting was enabled the top of the icons could go a bit beyond the top screen edge when magnifying on certain dock backgrounds.
Decreased the refresh time of smoothly moving a dock to a new position to allow the Windows DWM to keep up, otherwise movement would appear jerky.
Wallpaper color-hot track is now correctly previewed when trying new themes and wallpapers in the Themes tab.
The balloon tooltip of the 'Lookup IP address' internal command was disappearing immediately in this command was run from the Shelf.
NextSTART v16.2 complete change log:
Updated the French language file.
Updated Italian language file (incomplete).
Updated Spanish language file (incomplete).
Updated Indonesian language file.
Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file (incomplete).
The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.
The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'.
This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.
Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the NextSTART taskbar.
Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).
Added option to lock desktop hotspot buttons so they cannot be dragged by accident.
Added option to automatically snap desktop hotspot buttons into alignment when dragging them.
Pressing SHIFT when dragging a desktop hotspot button now causes all hotspot buttons within snapping range of each other to move as a group.
Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.
Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default. The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.
You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.
Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.
Added new 'CD Control' internal command. Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on.
Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.
NextSTART can now capture the new WorkShelf Battery Monitor module into the taskbar.
Improved User Interface integration with Windows 10 when running under this version of Windows.
The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Español' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.
With the group tasks menu set to show on mouseover, sometimes the menu could open and close in quick succession before stabilizing.
Tweaked the timings for the group tasks menu to popup on mouseover.
The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.
Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.
The Winstep Update Manager was installing Nexus Ultimate Language Packs for Winstep Xtreme users.
Power Off Monitor' and 'Start Screen Saver' internal commands were not working.
Hotspot descriptive information in the Hotspots tab of NextSTART Preferences was not being updated when editing the last hotspot/creating a new hotspot.
Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x
Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).
Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead. This allows the user to specifically run shortcuts.
The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.
Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of system tray and task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion list. Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.
Right clicking twice in quick succession on the system tray clock button would crash NextSTART.
Left clicking the system tray clock button under Windows 10 was opening a 'Send to WorkShelf' dialog instead of showing the Windows Calendar dialog.
Fixed some issues with capturing WorkShelf desktop modules into the NextSTART taskbar.

New in Winstep Xtreme 15.9 (Oct 2, 2015)

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.
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.
Smooth transitions when moving, adding or removing NextSTART taskbar buttons.
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 'Fly In' menu animation as well as improvements to existing menu open animations.
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.
Added option to automatically hide (Fade out) WorkShelf's desktop modules at startup.
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.
New 'Most Used' Shelf tab and menu types to display a list of your most used applications.
Added new 'Action Center' internal command (Windows 10 only).
Clicking the clock module or the clock button on the taskbar now shows the Windows calendar instead of the Regional Settings dialog (Windows 7 onwards).
Size of the Quick Launch area in the NextSTART taskbar can now be automatically limited to a percentage of the available size.
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! Please see complete change log below...