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 Post subject: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 10:44 pm 
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Xtreme lets you do so much, customize the look and interface, but it's. . .a lot. I think I'm getting overwhelmed by options. I've thought about just buying the Dock separate.

I picked up Xtreme a few months back during a sale. I'd been using the free animated dock for a year, and wanted the full version, but the Xtreme was a good deal, so I got it all. I ran it for a few months and liked it, though I'm a bit confused by all the options. I had previously fumbled through it and turned most everything but the Dock off, but now I've recently built a new machine (first in 7 years!) and I'd like to set it up 'just so', and maybe turn these on one at a time and try them.


I'm a little confused by the various modules and where to change their settings, and how to get to them without clicking blindly through it.

What are the names of the modules, and what do they control?
  • -Xtreme is. . .everything, I think? Or maybe it's the Wallpaper and widgets.

  • -NextStart is the taskbar and start menu? I tried turning off the start menu button, but I ended up with a 'hotspot' button floating around the desktop that I couldn't remove, so I just turned off Nextstart, I think.

  • -Is the animated dock called "Nexus" in Xtreme? I think it also adds bookshelves, which look interesting. I might like to try them.


  • -If I've turned off all the modules but the Dock module (called Nexus?), how can I get to the interface for all the other modules again? Clicking on the Winstep Xtreme icon on the desktop doesn't bring up the interface, and I don't see it in the Nexus menu, though maybe I'm missing it.


I like the taskbar changes, but it seems like when I enable it, the screen flickers sometimes and something resets. Maybe explorer restarting? I'd like to leave it, the start button and 'hotspots' off, and use other things

Re: Dock Themes
I DL'ed a bunch of Dock themes, the little gfx that icons appear to sit on, from the link in your program, but they aren't working. The program can't seem to import 7zip or RAR files, just ZIP. I un-archived them and moved them, in their own folder, to the correct folder, opened from the folder link in the interface, but it doesn't recognize them. I tried to import the .zip'ed themes, but no matter the folder I put them in, it tells me, "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program" even if I JUST created the folder and moved the themes into it. Nothing should reasonably be using it.

It's also a bit annoying that I can't multi-select items to import, when I DL'ed a dozen or more cool new themes. I have to import one at a time.

Sorry if this seems random and confused. Anything you can answer might help me get my bearings a bit. Thanks!


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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 11:34 pm 
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Hi!

First of all, have you read THIS already?

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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:00 am 
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winstep wrote:
Hi!

First of all, have you read THIS already?

Sorry to have disturbed you.


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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:13 am 
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Docjon wrote:
Sorry to have disturbed you.


Eh? I just used that as an introduction, not as RTFM. :)

First I needed to know if that product comparison answered some of your questions or not.

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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 10:00 am 
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I have to admit, my thinking is a lot fuzzier than it used to be. Health problems, meds - the latest meds only let me sleep about 20 hours a week. It's hard to concentrate. I was kind of hoping someone might throw me a bone and spoon-feed me a few answers, something to grab onto and help me get my bearings a bit. I'm not sure I was even coherent enough to ask decent questions. Sorry about that.

I spent most of the past 8 hours or so looking over the FAQ and playing with Xtreme. I was once again reminded of what a greatly involved project this is. If it's just you doing it. . .wow.

I guess there's no way around it, I just gotta study and work with it. Too much material and some unfamiliar concepts. I'm still wading through stuff and finding myself confused, but I'm taking notes, and learning a bit. I bought this around last Black Friday,and I haven't really scratched the surface. Think I'll stick with it and work up a cool-looking, functional interface to go with my new Ryzen computer. I don't generally go for fancy custom stuff - Nexus Dock was about it on my last machine - but what the hell. Looks like this has more possibilities than I imagined.

I'm still having trouble finding the options to bring back items once they're removed from the screen. For example, I just did something to lose the bookshelf (no idea what!) and now all I can find is options to alter the dock (which is still there). I think that's my biggest hurdle so far, trying to find the appropriate location to add/change features not currently displayed, like the now-missing bookshelf. With my reading, I can see where the settings and controls for something this deep won't have a simple interface, but I find myself missing a master menu -"click here for Taskbar and start menu, here for dock and bookshelf", etc. Maybe there is one and I haven't found it.

One thing's for sure- I'm gonna back-up the settings frequently :)


I'll keep poking at it and see if I can get the hang of things.


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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 10:31 pm 
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The reason I directed you to that Product Comparison page is because it explains the difference between the different Winstep products (and the components of each) in simple terms and with pictures to help you visualize the differences.

That page alone should answer the initial half of your first post.

You could say that Nexus free, Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme are 'different levels' of the same product, and, in a way, that is exactly what they are.

It also explains that as you go from the free version of Nexus, to Nexus Ultimate to Winstep Xtreme, the learning curve gets steeper: because each of the different products has much more stuff than the previous, naturally there is also much more to learn if you want to go further than 'skin deep'.

I understand it can be a bit frustrating at times, especially now that we no longer have a detailed User Guide like we had some years ago, but, on the other hand, discovering all the functionality Winstep Xtreme has to offer can also be a lot of fun! Your persistence gets rewarded by discovering bits and pieces of functionality you might not even know was there in the first place.

Winstep products are fully customizable and also extremely powerful, and that means hundreds of different options. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so a setting that works for you might not work for another - Winstep applications cater to both by allowing you to tweak all these settings until you get something that works *for you*. It's all about personalization.

Flexibility and ease of use, however, are normally enemies of each other: make a product extremely simple to use and you've also dumbed it down. Too many options and users get lost.

So, there is a balance, and Winstep products try to achieve that balance via the default settings and context menus. If you forget that the Preferences panel exists, Winstep applications are actually very easy to use: drag & drop, right click context menus, that is all you need to use.

It's only when you go to Preferences and see all those different options that things start to get complicated - on the other hand, the options are there for when you want to go beyond the basics, you just have to find them and understand what they do and how they work. And here is where the learning curve starts to get steeper.

Docjon wrote:
I like the taskbar changes, but it seems like when I enable it, the screen flickers sometimes and something resets.


Yes. The Winstep NextSTART taskbar, just like the Windows taskbar, reserves a part of the screen area for itself, so that maximized windows do not cover it. Because the size (height) of the Windows taskbar is different than the size of the Winstep taskbar, that difference in size of the reserved areas makes the windows on your screen re-position themselves not to overlap the taskbar. That is the 'flicker' you see.

If you then disable the NextSTART taskbar, the same thing will happen as the Windows taskbar becomes visible again and the available screen space changes one more time.

Docjon wrote:
The program can't seem to import 7zip or RAR files, just ZIP.


First of all, think about this: you are able to use dock themes that were actually made for OTHER docks (RocketDock, YzDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, etc), not just native Winstep themes. Isn't that amazing by itself?

Other docks don't do that, they support their own native skinning format and that's it - want to use a dock theme made for RK Launcher in RocketDock? You'll have to modify the INI files yourself!

Now, want to know why these dock themes come in all these different compression formats (.ZIP, RAR, etc...)? Because NONE of the other docks support ANY compression formats! Dock theme authors were thus free to use whatever compression program/format they pleased - the end user would have to MANUALLY un-archive those themes and move them into their own folders. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

So, what you think of as a drawback, is actually a feature: unlike ALL the other docks, which support ZERO compression formats, the Winstep dock actually supports the most popular (and official since it is also natively supported by Windows) compression format available: zip files.

Docjon wrote:
It's also a bit annoying that I can't multi-select items to import, when I DL'ed a dozen or more cool new themes. I have to import one at a time.


With the other docks you would have to do the same. But here is a little 'secret' (it was actually mentioned in the old User Guide, but, as I said, we no longer have an up-to-date User Guide):

Place *all* the zip files at once inside the

C:\Users\Public\Documents\WinStep\AutoInstall\

folder and then click the Import button in the Themes tab of Preferences. The Import function will now try to install all those themes at once.

Docjon wrote:
I un-archived them and moved them, in their own folder, to the correct folder, opened from the folder link in the interface, but it doesn't recognize them.


Guess you need to read THIS too. It's a 'How to install Themes' tutorial linked to in the Themes and Support page on the Winstep web site. The information is there, but you do have to look for it.

Docjon wrote:
I tried to import the .zip'ed themes, but no matter the folder I put them in, it tells me, "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program" even if I JUST created the folder and moved the themes into it. Nothing should reasonably be using it.


Can you please reproduce the situation again, but this time describing in detail here *every* little step you took? Devil is in the details, as always.

Docjon wrote:
I find myself missing a master menu -"click here for Taskbar and start menu, here for dock and bookshelf", etc. Maybe there is one and I haven't found it.


First you have to keep in mind that NextSTART and WorkShelf (the two main components of Winstep Xtreme) are *separate* applications even though they are part of the same suite (much like Excel and Word are separate applications in Microsoft Office) so they have individual Preference screens.

For the Shelf, if you open WorkShelf Preferences, the 'Docks & Shelves' tab provides a centralized place from where you can manage the Shelf and all your docks, as well as access the Options screens of each.

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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 11:10 am 
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Yeah, I really didn't grasp that I wasn't able to find my way back to the bookshelf, for example, because that program was closed. I figured they were more integrated. It took way too long for me to realize that, but now that I have, I'm not spending forever sorting through menus looking for it - I just go and launch it again. Not my proudest moment. Oh well.

The tip about the auto-install dir is gold. I'll make use of it, thanks. I wasn't really complaining that multiple compression formats weren't supported - that's perfectly understandable - I was wanting to uncompress and dump the files into the dir myself and have them recognized, and/or multi-select files for quick addition. AS YOU SAID, though, the importing of large amounts of themes, etc, are covered with the autoinstall dir/import option.

Now that I'm starting to grasp some basics like importing themes, backing up settings, the multi-program nature of the suite, I'm doing better. There's still plenty of things I don't fully understand, but at least I'm not entirely lost. It's small-scale misunderstanding, not utter confusion. The hotbuttons and the start menu area is a bit of a mystery, so I think I'll move on to the bookshelf and see what fun I can have there, and revisit the other later. The bookshelf seems more straightforward.

How long have you been working on this? I did a shitty 2-minute google on the product history and didn't come up with anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were developing this, in one form or another, since WinXP. There's that much effort and thought evident.

Glad to hear the 'flickering' I saw wasn't an explorer crash or the like. Programs that made large changes to the system interface used to have a reputation for making the computer more unstable, but so far, this has been pretty damn solid. Don't recall a crash at all, now that I know the flickering is just a window adjustment.

I think my biggest problem is that I'm going to spend too much time playing with it! :)

THanks for the responses.


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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 12:21 pm 
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Docjon wrote:
How long have you been working on this? I did a shitty 2-minute google on the product history and didn't come up with anything, but I wouldn't be surprised if you were developing this, in one form or another, since WinXP. There's that much effort and thought evident.


Thanks!

Version 1.0 of NextSTART was released for Windows 98 back in February 1999. That was 19 years ago - sometimes it's hard to believe it's been that long. :)

Also, believe it or not, some Winstep customers from those ancient times are still with us...

Docjon wrote:
I think my biggest problem is that I'm going to spend too much time playing with it! :)


Above all, have fun!

Don't forget to backup your current settings first (Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Backup), so you have a known good configuration to go back to in case your experiments go south. :wink:

Also, don't forget that you will have to backup NextSTART and WorkShelf settings separately because they are independent applications.

EDIT - One IMPORTANT 'heads up' about the AutoInstall folder: once the themes have been imported, all the zip files in the AutoInstall folder will be automatically deleted.

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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:28 am 
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winstep wrote:
Also, believe it or not, some Winstep customers from those ancient times are still with us...


Where? :shock:

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 Post subject: Re: A bit confused, I have some questions
PostPosted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 6:30 am 
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vectornut wrote:
Where? :shock: <- RIGHT THERE LOL

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