I followed the directions below this and nothing happened.



If the above isn't the way to activate sub-docks, then it means that I've forgotten how to do that and can't figure out how to do it. What do I need to do to make sub-docks?

You right click on the dock -> Insert New Dock Item -> Sub-Dock

winstep wrote:




This does seems like the best idea so far (voice of experience I guess).

Maybe you could ad an internal smart swich (that will stop everything eye candy related if CPU load is above x%)? After all, you only need the extra compute power... when you don`t have it, wright? And this could bring benefits for other situations, not only when playing games, I am talking about rendering, or the heavy multitasking with graphical apps and video editors that today design projects ask for sometimes, doing video encoding for multiple files and so on... After all, many times this activities require to do quite a lot of browsing. In those cases a responsive dock system is a great thing.
Anyway, those that do this, on a regular base and use winstep, could give more feedback. In case that such users even exist....
Personaly, I have not felt the need to squeeze more performance from winstep apps and I do enjoy the eyecandy provided, animated icons and all...

Oh oh. I might have found a bug. I made a sub-dock per your instructions on the bottom dock. I dragged a folder to the sub-dock, no problem.

I decided to put the Onscreen Keyboard on the sub-dock. I'm using Windows 7. Well, I couldn't because when I clicked Start > All Programs > Accessories > Ease of Access and tried to drag it to the sub-dock, I guess because of the setting it would disappear before I could drag it.

What made it a problem is that the All Programs menu was in the way since the sub-dock is on the left side of the dock. (Can the sub-dock be moved to another location on the dock?) In case it matters, I use the program Classic Start Menu which makes the Start Menu look and behave like it did in XP.

So, now comes the possible bug. I decided to instead drag Onscreen Keyboard to the WorkShelf and then from there to the sub-dock. Well, what I thought was impossible happened.

When I dragged Onscreen Keyboard to the WorkShelf, it MOVED the entry instead of copying it to make a shortcut. Now Onscreen Keyboard is no longer in the Start Menu! It's now in WorkShelf!

I didn't think that was supposed to happen. Now the most important thing is, how do I get it back into where it belongs? I don't want to fool around trying to get it back and make things worse.

Regarding the question about how to decide if dynamic content is to be updated in the background e.g. while one of more displays are in "full-screen whatever":

I think you should keep the current (old) behavior by default, and add user options to select "what to always update" regardless off any full-screen session. Checkable options could be for example:

1) Cosmetic animations (water ripples, Wanda-fish, etc)
2) Monitors (CPU, memory, whether, clock, etc)

Maybe these options should be per shelf/dock? This would make it the most flexible for the user to decide exactly what to do for the setup.

When it comes to sound effects I think the sound should be seen as part of the update so that if anything updates on X then it should produce the associated sound event of X as well, as long as sound is turned on.

Yeah, the KISS principle (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Ok, not as easy as I first expected it to be, but stuff now will not update if below a full screen window and will carry on updating if located at another monitor.

Jorge, did you see my last post in this thread about the possible bug and what I need to do about it?

Windy, if you drag a shortcut from a folder into a different folder on the same drive, what happens? Unless you press the CTRL key to make it a Copy drag & drop operation, Windows will *move* the shortcut to the other other.

Folder type Shelf tabs behave exactly like folders. They are windows into physical folders on your hard drive - unlike Regular tabs which can only hold pointers to file objects, Folder tabs hold actual file objects.

The All Programs part of the Start Menu structure is based on an existing folder/shortcut structure. So when you drag something from that part of the Start Menu you are dragging a shortcut, which exists as an actual file somewhere in your hard drive.

Your problem was not understanding this *and* thus dragging the OSK shortcut to a Folder tab in the Shelf instead of into a Regular tab. As expected, the shortcut was moved - it's not a bug, it's working as designed.

To fix it just do the opposite: drag it from the Shelf tab into where it was in the Start Menu.

At first I considered adding an option for this, but then I realized it would just be going down the rabbit hole.

Simple is always better, unless making it too simple results in reduced functionality (as Apple is doing now). The fact is that this day and age everyone and their dog have at least a dual core CPU. So, because the benefits on modern systems are nowhere near as important as they once were, the added complexity is not justified.

In the end this is what I implemented: anything on the screen where the full application resides stops updating. Anything not there, keeps on updating.

Some things - like the Raindrop effect *audio* - will stop playing regardless if a full screen application is open anywhere.

Something else I've also been thinking of adding but which is also not as simple/linear to implement as it might look:

NextSTART hotspots opening WorkShelf sub-docks. Buttons in the Quick Launch section of the NextSTART taskbar are hotspots, so that would be a handy way to activate/open a sub-dock.

Also, going to update some of the NextSTART Windows 10 taskbar icons as I think they look a lot better in Windows 10 with no color: Action Center, Search, Windows Start Menu and Task View. You can grab them from here now if you want:

Jorge, thanks for explaining that. I wasn't sure, but I'm glad it's not a bug. I was under the impression that anything in the Start Menu, especially something that is a built-in feature which is hardwired into Windows couldn't be moved so easily.

I thought it would be the same as an app on an Android cellphone where you cannot delete or move the location of a program that is hardwired to the phone such as Gallery in the Apps section. If you drag it to the Home or other page, it will make a shortcut. It will not move the icon/program's location. You can only delete the shortcut for it that is placed on the Home Page or other page.

Until I read your explanation of how it works, I was totally lost. I couldn't drag it back to where/how I did it because the Context Menu would disappear as soon as I would try to drag it back. I even disabled Classic Start Menu and Winstep to use the desktop icon and the Start Menu the "regular" way, but it still did the same thing.

To move it back using the Start Menu, I had to go to Accessories, right-click > Open and then drag the On-Screen Keyboard icon into the Ease Of Access folder. Without you explaining the function to me, I would have been too scared to try that for fear that I would corrupt something.

Thanks again for your help Jorge!

If you're using the NextSTART main menu, sub-menus will automatically open when you drag something over them.

You could have done it that way too, i.e.; dragged the OSK shortcut from the Shelf, held it over the NextSTART's taskbar Start button which would open the main NextSTART menu after a short pause, continue dragging the OSK shortcut over the main NextSTART menu until it was over the Programs sub-menu which would also open after a short pause, and so on until you had the Accessories sub-menu open, at which point you could simply drop the shortcut into it.

I just added an edit but noticed you replied to my post and removed it.

Here's my new question.

Can you add a lock feature to sub-docks and to drawers when you implement it to prevent them from disappearing when something is clicked? I can't drag something from the Start Menu to the sub-dock. This would make things much easier.

I remember some years ago you honored a request by me to prevent the Winstep context menu from disappearing in the same manner. I remember that when I would bump to open a folder, and then go to drag something into a folder that was part of the context menu, the context menu would disappear. The change you made to lock the context menu made drag and drop simple. The video I made that's on your page illustrates that.

You're doing it backwards.

You're first opening the sub-dock and then the Start Menu, which, obviously, immediately closes the sub-dock as soon as you click on the Start Button.

What you need to do is open the Start Menu first. Then drag the item you want OVER the sub-dock's parent icon in the main dock, and let it hover for just a little bit. Just like the method described in my previous post, the sub-dock will automatically open after a very short while.

NOW you can drop your shortcut into it.

You can do the same with the Shelf, even a collapsed one: drag a shortcut over a Shelf tab and the Shelf will automatically expand *and* select the tab you are hovering over. With the Shelf open, you can drag the shortcut over other tab headers to automatically select those tabs until you find the one you want.

Likewise, if a Shelf tab has more icon rows than those that are visible, you can access the hidden rows by dragging the shortcut over the little scroll arrows at the right of the Shelf body: the Shelf will automatically scroll up or down.