User Guide is looking slick

It's not the look (although it helps!), it's the function! Certainly looks impressively comprehensive on that page. Can't wait to actually try it. Thought just occurred, would be nice to have an off-line version - e.g., not all users are obsessively online all the time but some work offline at times.

That's just the old UG with a new look... adding actual new content is going to be a LOT of work.

Yes, I can see it's going to be a right shedload of work! And that's just the Workshelf bit. The whole thing will be like writing a major book! I used to be able to type about 10-15,000 words a day, but I'm a lot slower these days as my hands won't play ball. (10-15K words is equivalent to writing up a 30K PhD thesis in 2-3 days, or a short novel.)

In the mean time I have nearly finished bringing the Winstep Start Menu Organizer to the 21st century.

Besides the different UI modes (standard, dark, light, etc) , it now also has multi-monitor and per-monitor high DPI support.

Adding this was not as easy as it sounds, for instance, the old VB right click menu system did not support more than a single monitor, so when right clicking an item in one of the thee panels the context menu would always pop up in the Primary monitor lol. Had to mix some Windows API in there to solve that one.

Making sure everything scales correctly when moving dialogs between monitors with different DPIs also took some work.

Sounds like a fair lot of blood and sweat if not tears! My sympathy, and kudos Jorge!

Betas of v26.3 are out:

Winstep Xtreme beta:
https://www.winstep.net/xtreme-beta.zip

Nexus Ultimate beta:
https://www.winstep.net/ultimate-beta.zip


This is a beta and MUST be installed ON TOP of a full v26.1 OR LATER installation. Do NOT uninstall anything first, just exit all running Winstep applications and run the beta setup file.

There is no need to backup your settings first, but it does not hurt if you do either.

####

The Xtreme beta already includes the new Start Menu Organizer (v2.0)

So, major additions to Xtreme and Ultimate are the new "Programs" and "All Programs" tab types.

If you add a Grid Stack pointing to any of these two, because these tabs have a ton of shortcuts so the Grid Stack itself can be huge, I recommend right clicking the Grid Stack's parent icon, selecting Grid Stack Properties, going to the Appearance tab and setting the Grid Stack size to 5 rows of 6 icons or something like that. Also set it to display 2 lines of text.

If you are running Xtreme, I also recommend adding a Quick Launch item pointing to this Grid Stack to the NextSTART taskbar. This way you can access it from the taskbar as if it was the actual Windows Start Menu.

Also, once it expands, start typing: that opens and applies the search filter, making it very easy and quick to find whatever you are looking for.

I also added new shelf navigation keys: PgUp, PgDn, Home and End.

Making a complete mockery of the much publicized "Perform Speed Test" right click menu addition to the network systray icon, I added the same option to the Winstep tray (Windows 11 only) in 30 seconds flat, but opening a web page pointing to SpeedTest.net rather than MS Bing.

There are a ton of other additions and fixes, check the history file of each application to find out more (Preferences -> About tab -> click version number in the top right corner -> View Change Log)

Here is the one for WorkShelf/Nexus Ultimate:

--------------------------

Version 26.3 build 1839


New Features:


* Updated Russian language file.

* Updated German language file.

* You can now drag & drop files as arguments to UWP applications.

* Ensured text for disabled items remains readable even when the item is selected regardless of current UI mode (e.g. Alarm Manager with Dark UI modes).

* On new installations the RAM Meter module now shows Private Memory (total process-owned memory) instead of Working Set (physical RAM currently in use) for each process.

* Changed the moon and sun weather icons used for light cloudy days.

* Shelves and Drawers no longer auto-collapse/hide if the Search Box is currently on the screen.

* It is now possible to close the Search Box by clicking on the Magnifying Glass icon. Previously this required pressing the ESC key or deleting all search characters.

* Optimized performance of the Search filter by not retrieving the items from disk every time the search filter changes, unless there has been a file system change in the source folder/tab.

* Added a new "Programs" tab type to shelves, drawers and grid stacks: shows the contents of the Start Menu "All Programs" folder, with Program groups opening as Grid Stacks.

* A new “All Programs” tab type has been added to shelves, drawers, and grid stacks. This tab displays the full contents of the Start Menu’s All Programs folder, but without any program groups or subfolders. All applications are shown together in a single, alphabetically sorted list, complete with letter separators similar to the Windows 11 Start Menu. Because everything appears on one level and is neatly organized, this tab type is highly optimized for quickly locating applications. Just start typing and the Search Box will appear automatically, filtering the list in real time to show only the items that match your query.

* Monitor names are now read directly from the monitor itself, so you’ll see the correct model name instead of the usual "Generic PnP Monitor".

* Added Page Up, Page Down, Home and End keyboard navigation shortcuts to shelves, grid stacks and drawers.

* Shortcuts targeting file system applications pinned to the Windows Start Menu or from the Shell:AppsFolder are now properly resolved when dropped into the Winstep application, so they do not potentially result in a "file not found" error when trying to run them due to the automatic 32 bit to 64 bit re-direction. Likewise, running indicators now light up properly for those type of shortcuts.

* Windows 11: added "Perform Speed Test" option to the context menu of the Network tray icon, opens Speedtest.net on a browser page.

* More stable scrolling in shelves, drawers and grid stacks, PGUP and PGDN also scroll smoothly.


Fixes:


* Fixed overflow issue that would prevent SMART data from being retrieved for the Disk Meter after 24.87 days of system uptime.

* Mitigated Access Violation exception reading from 0xC that happened on some systems right at startup while initializing a 3rd party DLL required for HTTPS web access. Actual cause still unknown although interference from 3rd party software is suspected. It was possible to recover and continue, but this required pressing Retry 17 times. The exception dialog no longer appears but HTTPS access is not possible if the exception happens silently. The Check Internet Access test in the Troubleshooting Options dialog will let the user know if he is affected by this or not.

* Minimizing windows to the dock stopped working if Explorer crashed.

* Blank separators in shelves, grid stacks and drawers would appear selected when smooth scrolling a multi-selection area.

* A Grid Stack opened via NextSTART might now show the opening animation under certain conditions.

* Floating menus were not being automatically resized when changing that monitor's DPI settings.

* Fixed potential issue that could cause the Winstep application to hang/freeze when you moused over a dock if the current foreground window belonged to a frozen application.

I think I just accidentally came up with a new cool mouseover effect (in truth, a combination of effects).

In the dock you can already combine the magnify effect with other effects. The other effect I just found out also combines nicely with the other effects is "gray scale".

So, by adding a "Combine with gray scale effect" setting, the icons are all gray scale until you mouseover them. What happens next depends on the effect type: if it is an animation like bouncing, pushing, etc, the icon becomes colored as you mouse over it and the animation plays (going back to gray scale once the animation stops), if it is a particle animation effect (burn, heal, etc) the icon remains gray scale but the particle animation itself has color, which looks surprisingly good.

Xtreme beta download keeps failing - I'll try again when/if I can get into Windows.

I really fail to understand who/why would like this sort of thing. Boring and worse, distracting. OK, I'm "oldskool", so what?

Just tried it here, no problems...

What do you mean by "keeps failing" ? Anyone else experiencing issues?

At the end of the download browser reports "Download failed". Anyway, I'll try again when I get a chance.

Hello gents,

No issue here downloading.

Although, cautious about installing.
Curiosity question, how stable are these beta builds, and anything to watch out for as far as possible issues or stability?

Nothing against your coding skills Jorge, lol, but I've only ever installed final release updates

Unlike Microsoft, I don't release anything with known bugs lol

Normally private beta releases are pretty stable as I test the new features thoroughly until I am happy with them - the private betas are more a way of evaluating user's opinions ("here, check it out, what do you think, what would you change?") than actually finding bugs.

Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't any bugs as each individual setup is different and I can't emulate them all here - that is also one of the purposes of the betas, catch anything I did not.

Generally speaking, much more dangerous are changes or additions to already existing features, however small those changes are.

This is because you are changing code that is no longer fresh in your memory, so you no longer have a "clear mental model" of what everything does and how it interconnects. Besides, since it was working fine before, you tend not to test everything as thoroughly as you did the first time ("it's only a small change, after all").

This is where that famous IT joke "99 little bugs in the code, take one down, patch it around, 127 bugs in the code" comes from

So, unless changes are being made to very sensitive areas of the code (as was the case with v26.1 that made MAJOR changes to how data - e.g. whole structures of nested docks, grid stacks, sub-docks, etc - was moved/copied between the various objects via drag & drop) these betas are very, very, safe. I warn users to backup their settings before trying the new beta if not.

Stuff as I described above for v26.1 was actually done to increase the robustness of the whole thing and fix previous limitations and bugs (something that was achieved 100%) but, as the late Patrick Swayze said in Roadhouse, until all the little quirks and unintended consequences are discovered, "it will get worse before it gets better".

This said, nothing is lost if you backup your settings (Preferences -> Advanced -> Backup) before installing a beta, and, who knows, that backup might even be useful later on for unrelated reasons. If running Xtreme don't forget that NextSTART and WorkShelf settings must be backed up individually.

Besides, if any true show stopping bugs are found, a fix would be released the very next day at the most. Only little things tend to linger between betas.

IIRC, that "bug" IT joke had its origin in Windows updates, where for every bug that was fixed five new ones Hydra-like appeared. I seem to recall this came about quite early on.