One thing that never fails to break my little furry heart is when I get an email from a user saying 'I was looking for a way to do <x> but I couldn't find that option anywhere' and I know that feature already exists.
It means *I* failed.
There are two things I tremendously dislike having to do: writing documentation (writing the News section on the Winstep web site every time there is a new release is a real pain for me) and organizing/making the UI of the application.
The latter is mostly due to the lack of space to add more options to existing panels, and how difficult it actually is to organize hundreds of different settings so they are where you expect them to be.
Users take a look at the simplicity of RocketDock's UI and then raise their arms in despair when they open Nexus Preferences. Some simply give up right then and there because they think the whole thing is too complicated.
They do have a point, but the reason is that despite RocketDock being a GREAT dock, it doesn't do 1/50 of the things Nexus can do. The reason some users don't realize this is because they have ZERO interest in features <x,y,z> (for instance, the recently added dock keyboard support) while that same feature is already of critical interest to Home Theater users, who in turn couldn't care less about that feature <w> that is so beloved by the first group of users...
We are all different. We all want and like different things, and Nexus being so granular in the choices it offers is precisely what allows you to express yourself, to customize the application so it works just how YOU want it to.
This comes with a price: UI clutter and complexity. The more options you have, the more difficult it becomes to organize them properly.
I try my best to bury the least used options in secondary dialogs, but this also means those options are harder to find (and even know they exist!) when you need them. And sometimes, mostly because of a lack of space (RocketDock's UI is very compact with a small font size, meaning you can cram more in, while the Nexus UI has a much larger font size) they won't be where they actually should be.
With UI space being at a premium, adding a new feature normally also implies having to re-arrange the layout of the WHOLE dialog/panel just to make room for it. No wonder I hate doing that so much.
But sometimes it is also for the best, as this is also an opportunity to reevaluate and reorganize what is already there. I'm constantly polishing the application, which includes trying to make the UI more logical and easier to use. This sometimes feels like an ungrateful job as it will mostly benefit potential new users (existing users already know where everything is) and, of course, does not generate much excitement in the latter group.
Case in point, the new visual representation of effects in the Effects tab of Preferences. I know (think?) this will have a great positive impact on new users, but mentioning it in a post above (with pictures and all) didn't generate a single comment from existing users.
Remember Sandra Bullock's in Gravity? 'Houston, Houston in the blind'? That's how I feel sometimes... 'is anybody out there?' lol
Anyway, the user I mentioned in the beginning of this post wanted to know if there was any way to disable the balloon tooltips (there is, but it is buried in the 'More Options' dialog of the General tab in Preferences).
He said he looked for that option but couldn't find it - and he's right, he couldn't find it because it isn't where he expected it to be, indeed where it *should* be (the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties panel). Since this is an infrequently used option, I added/copied the settings to the 'More Options' dialog of the Behavior tab.
This prompted a flurry of changes to the UI: I removed the 'Blur Settings' button from the Effects tab (it's not really an effect, is it?) and moved it to the Appearance tab, which is where it should have been all along.
I also added the 'Disable dock scaling on hight DPI settings' and 'Disable menu scaling on high DPI settings' options to the Appearance tab, since these are, without doubt, appearance related settings (and since they are no longer buried, users will now know these options exist more easily).
In the Behavior tab I moved the 'Edge Bump Settings' and 'Edge Slide Settings' buttons to INSIDE the Activation Settings dialog.
Since how fast a dock activates is influenced by two things (delay to activate when the mouse pointer bumps the screen edge *and* speed of the slide animation) I moved the Animation Speed slider to the Activation dialog as well (removing it from the Auto-Hide settings dialog). This makes sense and is important because users sometimes think Nexus is slow due to the artificially imposed delays (which are there to help prevent accidental edge bumps).
I also added a new 'Grab focus when activated' setting (enabled by default) to this dialog to finally answer the request of some users for the dock NOT to grab the focus when activated.
Since it has to do with activations, I also moved the new 'Full Screen Exclusion List' button to the Activation Settings dialog. This also makes it easier for Home Theater users to know that this very important option (to them) actually exists.
Needless to say the Activation Settings dialog is now HUGE, but despite this it still was a pain organizing all the settings and explanations in a way that would fit in the available space, while still making sense. On the other hand, I believe it now contains all the options related to the activation of docks.
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Something else I am currently adding has to do with the 'Minimize to dock' function. Not being an Apple user (unlike the creators of RocketDock) I never understood the importance of this feature.
In the Mac, only minimized applications are added to the right side of the dock. The Windows taskbar, on the other hand, holds both active and minimized applications.
I never noticed that RocketDock did more than just add an icon to the dock when you minimized an application so I thought that the option to 'Minimize to dock' was purely cosmetic, but the fact is that it also does another very important thing (if you're into this method of organizing your running applications): it also removes the button of the minimized application from the Windows taskbar!
If you're using the dock together with the Windows taskbar (as you have to with RocketDock since, unlike Nexus, it does not have support for systray icons) this allows you to make a clear distinction between minimized and active applications.
It was only when this was explained to me that I finally understood the usefulness of that feature (of course, you could accomplish the same by splitting running applications in the dock into two distinctive groups, minimized and active, but ah well, there are always several ways to skin a cat) which is why I decided to add a 'Show Minimized Applications Only' setting to the dock, which also removes the button from the taskbar when you minimize an application.
Unfortunately, due to how things work internally, this setting will have to be global, i.e.; apply to all the docks.