Winstep Nexus Dock 10.3 Released

[Guest Di7ra]

Almost everything is nice but i really would like to have more options for icon positioning (like distance from edge and reflections). Also it would be wonderful to be able to use XWD skins wihtout porting (sounds fantastic? ). And i would like to buy standalone dock with all its features - including requested as they'r important to me and currently are realised in free XWD - i don't need whole Winstep suit (using Rainmeter)

Added

Forgot to ask, could you make icons moving (shifting) more smooth, please? Thanks.

Edited May 4, 2010 by Di7ra

[JcRabbit]

And i would like to buy standalone dock with all its features - including requested as they'r important to me and currently are realised in free XWD - i don't need whole Winstep suit (using Rainmeter)

You mean something like this?

Nexus Ultimate allows you to create as many docks and nested sub-docks (so you can categorize your items) as you want, features a tabbed dock (Shelf), etc...!

Also it would be wonderful to be able to use XWD skins wihtout porting (sounds fantastic? ).

Nexus is compatible with skin formats for all relevant 3rd party docks (RocketDock, Yz Dock, MobyDock, RK Launcher, ObjectDock). This said, I have no idea if XWD have their own proprietary skin format, but, if they do, so does Winstep - in fact, Winstep's skinning format allows the use of complex dock overlays and other niceties for truly amazing dock backgrounds.

I haven't started pushing this format yet because I'm still working on the new Winstep Skin Builder application.

Forgot to ask, could you make icons moving (shifting) more smooth, please? Thanks.

In what respect? In terms of the magnify animation? You are aware that you can change the magnification span (how many icons at once are affected) and smoothness in Nexus Preferences -> Effects -> Effect Settings, right?

One thing you should try is set the dock's mouseover animation to Bounce and then set the Effect Magnitude (again, by clicking on the Effect Settings button) to large. I love it!

Edited May 4, 2010 by JcRabbit

[Guest Di7ra]

You mean something like this?

Nexus Ultimate allows you to create as many docks and nested sub-docks (so you can categorize your items) as you want, features a tabbed dock (Shelf), etc...!

Hooray!

Nexus is compatible with skin formats for all relevant 3rd party docks (RocketDock, Yz Dock, MobyDock, RK Launcher, ObjectDock). This said, I have no idea if XWD have their own proprietary skin format, but, if they do, so does Winstep - in fact, Winstep's skinning format allows the use of complex dock overlays and other niceties for truly amazing dock backgrounds.

I haven't started pushing this format yet because I'm still working on the new Winstep Skin Builder application.

Xwd has its own skin format and if Nexus dock could to support

'>XWD 5.6 skins it would be trully amazing, indeed.

In what respect? In terms of the magnify animation? You are aware that you can change the magnification span (how many icons at once are affected) and smoothness in Nexus Preferences -> Effects -> Effect Settings, right?

One thing you should try is set the dock's mouseover animation to Bounce and then set the Effect Magnitude (again, by clicking on the Effect Settings button) to large. I love it!

Not mouseover animation but "Shift icons to make room for new entry when dropping items into the dock": dock resizes too harshly to free the spot, would like to have it more smooth.

[JcRabbit]

Xwd has its own skin format and if Nexus dock could to support XWD 5.6 skins it would be trully amazing, indeed.

How many XWD specific skins are there? What is so special about the XWD skinning format that the author had to come up with its own format? Just asking, really.

Not mouseover animation but "Shift icons to make room for new entry when dropping items into the dock": dock resizes too harshly to free the spot, would like to have it more smooth.

You're sure you're running v10.4? I did some work on that for v10.4, and when you drag the item over the dock for the first time the icons should now shift smoothly to make room. Unfortunately they still do 'jump' a bit when you then switch insertion points, is that what you meant? Hard to fix with the current dock magnification algorithm, but I'll give it a try as soon as I have a bit more time to work on that.

Edited May 5, 2010 by JcRabbit

[Guest Di7ra]

How many XWD specific skins are there? What is so special about the XWD skinning format that the author had to come up with its own format? Just asking, really.

I don't know what is special as i'm not coder of any kind. But you may have a look at XWD yourself or even at its source code.

You're sure you're running v10.4? I did some work on that for v10.4, and when you drag the item over the dock for the first time the icons should now shift smoothly to make room. Unfortunately they still do 'jump' a bit when you then switch insertion points, is that what you meant? Hard to fix with the current dock magnification algorithm, but I'll give it a try as soon as I have a bit more time to work on that.

Yes, i'm sure ver. 10.4.0903.

[zexe]

i found another glitch.

if the dock is quite large (many items, icons, tasks, systray) so it kind of reaches the screen side limits, it probably tries to selfadjust?

the effect is that windows (reserved edge on for nexus) kind of shimmer on the lowest part. the dock seems to stay put but the hight of the screen reserved area varies, by 2-4 pixels.

it sort of "blinks" the maximised running windows above the dock.

[JcRabbit]

if the dock is quite large (many items, icons, tasks, systray) so it kind of reaches the screen side limits, it probably tries to self adjust?

...

it sort of "blinks" the maximised running windows above the dock.

Yes, if necessary the dock will automatically adjust icon size to make sure it fits on the screen, but only down to the absolute minimum of 16x16 - after that the dock has no choice but to allow itself to extend off-screen.

When automatically adjusting the icon size, the height of the dock obviously changes with it. Since the reserved screen space is relative to the dock height (obviously talking about an horizontal dock here), the space available for maximized windows will change too, which might cause them to 'blink' when changing sizes to take advantage of the newly available space.

One can argue that the space reserved for the dock should remain the same even if the automatic icon size adjustment is taking place, but then I'm sure many users would then shout 'bug' when setting the dock icon size to, say, 256x256, which would be impossible to deliever if the dock hasn't enough screen space for this size, therefore resulting in a large gap between the dock and maximized windows because of the actual icon size and what the user set the dock to (hope this makes sense, hehe).

Anyway, if this is happening to you, it means you are running out of dock space because you're trying to fit into a single dock more functions than it can actually support given your screen resolution. You can either set the default icon size to a smaller value, or start thinking about upgrading to Nexus Ultimate, wich is Nexus with support for tabbed docks, multiple docks, and an infinite number of nested sub-docks.

[zexe]

Yes, if necessary the dock will automatically adjust icon size to make sure it fits on the screen, but only down to the absolute minimum of 16x16 - after that the dock has no choice but to allow itself to extend off-screen.

When automatically adjusting the icon size, the height of the dock obviously changes with it. Since the reserved screen space is relative to the dock height (obviously talking about an horizontal dock here), the space available for maximized windows will change too, which might cause them to 'blink' when changing sizes to take advantage of the newly available space.

One can argue that the space reserved for the dock should remain the same even if the automatic icon size adjustment is taking place, but then I'm sure many users would then shout 'bug' when setting the dock icon size to, say, 256x256, which would be impossible to deliever if the dock hasn't enough screen space for this size, therefore resulting in a large gap between the dock and maximized windows because of the actual icon size and what the user set the dock to (hope this makes sense, hehe).

Anyway, if this is happening to you, it means you are running out of dock space because you're trying to fit into a single dock more functions than it can actually support given your screen resolution. You can either set the default icon size to a smaller value, or start thinking about upgrading to Nexus Ultimate, wich is Nexus with support for tabbed docks, multiple docks, and an infinite number of nested sub-docks.

hehe, maybe i will once qualify for a license, by the way, can one get just nexus ultimate out of your product sets?

i solved the bouncing upper reserved space by removing a few icons and hiding more systray icons.

[JcRabbit]

Sorry for the delay in replying.

Check THIS out then.

Edited May 17, 2010 by JcRabbit