always on top docks showed on top of my full screen video player (one of them -GOM, while it doesn't show over Pot player or VLC, and over some full screen games (don't remember which ones)
while it isn't a common issue, and probably it has to do with the other applications not winstep itself, i have encountered it a couple of times

edit: some more examples i tested today office, photoshop full-screen, firefox full-screen, you-tube full-screen, so while it might work as option for some, its not for everyone

this could be circumvented with setting the dock and icons fully transparent with fade in mouse over effect
edit: or auto-hiding that dock but that kind of defeats its purpose?

keyboard shortcut maybe isn't a solution everyone would use, but winstep already has them, its just the issue of not being able to hide multiple docs with the same shortcut
(example, if you have dock A and dock B, you can hide Dock A with ALT+A and dock B with ALT+B, but if you set both docks to hide/show with ALT+A it stops working)

Gah. Really? Have to give another look at that particular section of the code.

if you set the same shortcut for multiple docks nothing happens when you press it

Fixed, thanks.

would have said something sooner but i thought it was maybe intentional or a coding limitation

Nah, it was just an oversight - with toggle-activation enabled the routine expected the dock to be the active window (which would be when doing this with the mouse) as a condition to hide it.

while we on the topic, there is no keyboard shortcut for shelf activation
(there is 'bring shelf to foreground' internal command which can be assigned a shortcut, but that only brings shelf forward if it is already extended, if the shelf is collapsed it does nothing)

Right click on a tab on the shelf and select Tab Properties. Here you can assign a hotkey to activate the tab. (what of course activates the shelf aswell)

Jorge, can you add this also to docks? Like already mentioned, when you have multiple monitors active and the border where you activate the dock is gone, there isn't any way to bring the dock to foreground.
A hotkey would be useful here.

I even could realize my suggestion with this. (dock icons that activate the shelf or bring a specific dock to foreground)
I could just make a task with my task planning software, "send keys" (key combination) and make a desktop shortcut with that task, which I then add to a dock. A kind of weird workaround, but hey, as long as it works... ^^

Dock Properties -> Behavior tab -> Activation Settings -> Hot key.

lol holy cow. I've totally overlooked that! And I was looking for a while...

I'm going to post this here since it is related to a new feature in v17.1:

As you are probably aware by now, one of the new features in this version is the ability to allow parent dock magnification when sub-docks are open.

The drawback is this also makes parent docks and sub-docks become separated by an excessive amount of space when none of them is magnifying. This spacing is an absolute MUST, as otherwise the sub-dock icon in the parent dock would cover up the sub-dock you just opened, making it a bit difficult (understatement of the year, ahah) to access some of the icons in the sub-dock.

I think, however, that most users still prefer it this way despite the extra spacing, which is why I made this option the new default (and if you think otherwise, or even if you agree, please feel free to share).

But, as with all new things, I just got an email from a user complaining about this excessive space between docks and sub-docks. And that got me thinking.

You probably noticed (and this something that happened before v17.1 as well) if you mouse over a parent dock when a sub-dock is open (or drag a shortcut over it), if this makes the sub-dock's parent icon move, the sub-dock (and any other open nested sub-docks) moves along with it.

So this might actually be a more elegant solution to the problem, although I haven't tried it yet in practice to see if it actually works without inducing motion sickness, creating difficulties to access sub-docks you just opened, or just general icon 'jumpiness':

I could perhaps use this same sub-dock 'auto horizontal position adjustment' in relation to the parent icon and adjust the position vertically too, to make sub-docks move away or closer to the parent dock as the parent icon magnifies.

Am I explaining myself correctly? When opening a sub-dock, at first the distance between it and the parent dock would be the same as it is now. But, as you moused away from the parent and the parent icon returned to normal size, the sub-dock would move closer to the parent dock at the same rate the parent icon becomes smaller. At the end of this movement, the sub-dock would be sitting right next to the parent dock, as it was before I added this new feature or if you turn it off (i.e.; no extra spacing).

Move the mouse pointer over the dock's parent icon (or icons next to it) and the open sub-dock automatically moves away from the parent dock to make room for the new magnifying icons.

This would be the best of both worlds, in my opinion... if it works. In practice it might not.

What do you guys think?

i was thinking about maybe sub-dock being on top of magnified icons as a third setting, but i think your idea is better and more elegant if it works

Had the same idea, after seeing someone complaining about the increased space.
Sure - this would be the most elegant solution. Wasn't sure if it could be easiliy implemented.

Edit: If I understood correctly, you want to make both options available. If that's the case you could name them "static sub-dock height" and "dynamic sub-dock height".
I think this would make the function relatively clear, without adding too much explanation.

Something else - at the risk of embarrasing myself - if found some documetation about the progress bars for applications in the Windows task bar. I thought it might contain some information how to implement the progress bars to the NextSTART task bar.

msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/system.windows.shell.taskbariteminfo.progressvalue(v=vs.110).aspx

No, the idea is to use one or the other, whichever is best. Too many options is not always a good thing.

Anyway, as I expected, it doesn't work very well.

I mean, it works great if you have a sub-dock already open, all snuggled up close to the parent dock, and you are coming from *outside* the dock(s) - in that case the sub-dock will just magnify as expected.

But if you are coming from the parent dock, as you mouse away from it the parent dock de-magnifies and the sub-dock moves along with it, which often results in the mouse pointer overshooting the icon (in the sub-dock) you were aiming for. The smaller the icon sizes, the worse this gets - you're basically chasing a moving target.

So I'm not sure what can be done to solve this.



Thanks for the link to the GERMAN page lol.

Anyway, that is client -> taskbar communication. Those settings cannot be retrieved from outside, and are probably all stored in some internal data structure held in memory and belonging to the process that hosts the taskbar (i.e.; Explorer.exe).