2016 has already seen five updates to Winstep software (v16.2, v16.3, v16.5, v16.6 and now v16.9), most filled to the brink with exciting new features.
I think it's safe to say that those who brought the software or renewed their upgrade subscriptions in early 2016 more than got their money's worth.
Now, except for the lets-not-get-burned-out short three month break between v16.6 and v16.9, normally work on the next release starts as soon as a new version is out the door. This time was no exception.
So, what are the things we are going to see in the next release? I will post them here as I implement them. So far this is what we got:
1. New high-quality Clock and Email voices.
The current male and female clock and email checker voices were originally recorded over 16 years ago. They're in .wav format and are very low quality.
The reason they are low quality is because back then 1.44 MB floppy drives and 56.6 Kbps dial up connections were still very much a thing, and you had to be very careful your setup application didn't become too bloated. The original wav samples (recorded by actual Winstep users) were thus down-sampled as low as they could possibly go, which added a lot of noise (hiss).
And so they have remain largely forgotten by me until I received an email on Winstep support complaining about the (lack of) audio quality in the voice packs.
These days we have some great text-to-speech engines on the web with various voice types, one of which I used to create the voice events for the new battery module. So I resorted to the same engine (and voices) to re-create the clock and email checker voices in MP3 format and much higher quality.
And since I was doing this...
2. The Email Checker module's voice is now able to report more than 59 messages.
The female and male voice packs were originally intended only for the clock module, so they only needed to count up to 59 (e.g.: the time is 12:59 AM, it then rolls to 1:00 AM, not 12:60 AM).
They were also recorded by real Winstep users and it was a somewhat laborious process involving a mic, a sound recorder and sound editing software, so when the Email Module was added I didn't see fit to ask them to record further voice samples for numbers above 50.
And thus from then on the Email Checker would choke if it had to report more than 59 unread messages.
Since I now had the benefit of a proper text-to-speech synthesizer, I could add the missing voice samples myself, and so I did, using the same male and female voices used for the Battery Monitor voice events.
The Email Checker is thus now able to properly speak numbers all the way up to 999,999.
3. Email Checker icon now optionally displays number of unread messages in the icon itself.
Some time ago on this forum a couple of users were discussing the advantages of displaying information on the module icons themselves, since that information can then be seen with a simple quick glance.
I remembered that, and so, by default, when there are unread messages the number of messages is now overlapped to the Email Checker icon. Those who don't like this feature can turn it off in the Email Checker Settings dialog.
I also briefly played with the idea of doing the same for the size of files in the Recycle Bin, but I didn't like how the Trash module looked with that enabled and I didn't think this information was important enough to warrant such a trade-off.
4. Fixed 'This upgrade can only be installed on top of an existing version' Winstep Update Manager error after downloading an update.
Some users got this message when the Winstep Update Manager had just downloaded a new update and was about to install it on their systems.
From what I was able to determine, this is related to Registry Cleaners deleting the Winstep uninstall information from the Windows Registry. Without it not only do you get this error, as no entry appears for the Winstep application in the Control Panel's Programs and Features dialog - leaving users unable to properly uninstall the software should they needed to.
Although not a problem with the Winstep software itself, this issue was becoming common enough that some action needed to be taken. But first I had to understand what was going on, and what was causing it to happen.
I was able to at least understand what was going on with the help of a *very patient* Winstep user suffering from this problem.
The manual fix to this issue is to download the full version of the Winstep software from the Winstep web site and install that on top of the current installation. This restores the uninstall settings in the Registry without touching current user settings for the Winstep application.
So, the solution to this problem was to make the Winstep Update Manager itself automatically download and install the full version, instead of the smaller update pack, whenever it detects that the uninstall section is missing from the Registry.
Moral of the story: do not use Registry Cleaners! They do more harm than good and can corrupt your system in really insidious ways!
5. New option to prevent hidden docks from automatically popping up when applications request attention.
If the dock is set to display running tasks, it will automatically pop up when, for instance, Skype is running and you receive a new Skype message. This is by design so you don't miss application notifications - the Windows taskbar, when set to auto-hide, does exactly the same.
So, although this is a fundamental feature when using Nexus to completely replace the Windows taskbar, if you are running both it can actually become a nuisance, given that the taskbar is already notifying you of this event.
A new option to disable this behavior was thus added to the Activation Settings dialog in the Behavior tab of Preferences/Dock Properties.
6. New 'No Theme' option for desktop modules/Digital Clock desktop module.
When there is no skin in a theme for a particular desktop module, the desktop module assumes the look of its iconic version. Selecting 'No Theme' for a desktop module is thus a way to force a module to look (and have the same style) as its iconic little brother.
This will be particular useful for the Clock module, as it will finally allow users to have a digital clock module on their desktops.