Jorge, I didn't get a response to this post so here it is again. The last part is new.




This is one of the things I was going to ask you about. Are you saying it's solely a performance issue and not impossible to do? If it's solely a performance issue, will it run normally with higher-end CPUs and monitors? If that's the case, warn the user about the possibility of performance issues. My setup runs 4k with no problem and has a solid state drive.

I was hoping that you made the single-tab Shelf with the option to work like the Grid Stack. For now as a workaround after a lot of trial and error, I dropped the Grid Stack into a single-tab WorkShelf docked on the side.

Just ran into another problem. Thinking you incorporated the Grid Stack features into a single-tab WorkShelf, I deleted the old ones.

However, the new ones are smaller. I wanted it to be the same size as the old one. I couldn't drag it to the size I want, so I changed the font in an attempt to make it larger.

I didn't like the way it looked, and decided to change it back. (I later found the Scale feature in the context menu tree). The font wouldn't change back to the default, so I had to delete it. Fortunately it didn't hold the "new" font.


BTW, will the option for icons to be left to right from the top to bottom be in the next beta, or if there is no next beta, in the next release?



I access them via my system tray. However, I don't remember what I did, but I put WorkShelf Preferences in one of my Grid Stacks. Is it possible to put NextSTART Preferences in the Grid Stack?

It's actually a little easier to access it via the Grid Stack. I have to double-click or right-click via the system tray, but bump and left-click via the Grid Stack. I'll still leave them in my system tray. I like the way they look, plus I don't mind having more than one way to access them.

Windy, this and your previous post are confusing (because you yourself seem to be confused about what is what) and gave me a headache.



Impossible to do WHAT exactly?! You can already expand a Shelf so it covers your whole screen (just drag the tab header), but you do so at your own peril.

This is not Windows Explorer where window backgrounds have no bitmaps and icons have no mouseover (etc) effects applied to them and are always the same size. The Shelf has to redraw EVERYTHING, and smooth scrolling a 4K sized Shelf is definitely not the same as scrolling a 4K sized Explorer window, despite all the speed optimizations I added to the code.

After a certain Shelf size and depending on your processor, things like scrolling, etc, start to get sluggish, even on a faster processor. The Shelf is NOT and was NEVER intended to run full screen all the time - you can, but if your CPU sucks and things get sluggish don't then turn around saying WorkShelf is slow.

This is what I find ironic about people who complain on uninstall surveys that the dock is slow. They have really low end CPUs but enable every single effect and feature they can on Nexus, and then complain that it runs slow. I wonder if they also run their games on Ultra on their integrated Intel GPUs and then complain that THE GAME is slow lol.



See? This is what I mean by confusing. I bet that what you are calling a 'single-tab Shelf' is really a Drawer. By hoping to make Drawers behave like Shelves, you're showing that you don't understand what Drawers are for.

Each object (docks, shelves, drawers, grid stacks, menus) has a very specific purpose because each has strengths and weaknesses. You should use whatever fits better YOUR intended purpose. For instance, you DO NOT use docks to show a long list of files that have the same exact icon, a menu would be MUCH better suited for that. By the same token, if you have a handful of files or applications you launch regularly, each with a different icon, then a dock would probably be better suited for them.

In the end, they ALL do the same thing: launch applications or files. They just do it and show those files in different ways.

If you want a single-tab Shelf, by all means create a single tab *Shelf*, then set the minimum number of icon rows to whatever number you want (so it opens full screen whenever you expand it: Shelf Properties -> Appearance -> More Options -> Minimum number of icon rows). Again, do so at your peril.

Just don't try to make a Drawer behave like a Shelf or a Grid Stack, that is not the purpose of Drawers.



Why would you even do that?! Again, shows you don't understand what each different object is for and does, or at least that you haven't been paying attention.



That's now how you make Drawers larger! You use the vertical and horizontal icon spacing feature for that. What bugs me is that I SHOWED pictures of how to do it and you even responded to that post, Windy!



You make it sound like you are talking about icon justification (left justify, center, right justify) which is already there, when in reality you are talking about the relative position of icon rows on upside down shelves.

Anyway, the answer is 'I don't know yet'. Once (if) I add it, I will say so here.



Not directly (because WorkShelf does not have a NextSTART Preferences internal command), but here is how you can do it: you create a hotspot in NextSTART associated to the 'NextSTART Preferences' internal command, and then in the Grid Stack you add a NextSTART hotspot (right click -> insert new item -> NextSTART hotspot) pointing to the hotspot you just created.



Well, doh lol. Because Grid Stacks are only temporarily on the screen, I changed the left mini-tab click behavior of Grid Stacks to open the Grid Stack properties dialog instead of Preferences.

Windy wrote:
I was hoping that you made the single-tab Shelf with the option to work like the Grid Stack. For now as a workaround after a lot of trial and error, I dropped the Grid Stack into a single-tab WorkShelf docked on the side.




No, it's not a drawer.

Look at your post Fri Sep 21, 2018 3:05 am and my response.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10791&start=15




Thanks for letting me know how to do that part. I think I did that a while back, but the problem is that it stays expanded while docked. I'll address this at the end.





The single tab WorkShelf has only 2 seemingly simple things missing that accomplishes what I'm trying to do.

1. An option for it to collapse to the desired size/Scale. It presently cannot collapse to a size/Scale smaller than what the icon rows are set at. I have the single tab WorkShelf (and Grid Stack) Scale set to 130%.

2. What you said here. (with the ability to scroll in small or large increments).

Press SHIFT while clicking on a scroll arrow in the Shelf to scroll one page at a time. Press CTRL while clicking on a scroll arrow in the Shelf to scroll all the way to the bottom or to the top.

I click the left mini-tab.



I double-click the title bar of the menu.

Old-school ehehe.

two things i noticed, not sure if beta related
a) CPU/RAM font seems to large (larger than before if im not imagining it)
https://prnt.sc/ladtoo


b) when changing workshelf themes then going back to my preffered theme (unlighted_ns)font seems to change (becoming much smaller) then reverts to its old size when i load my backup settings

http://prntscr.com/lacp1h


http://prntscr.com/ladwa3

Jesus, crap, I've been so focused on the new stuff that I completely overlooked this. You're right, and here is what happened (and why):

When adding menu scaling I started struggling with an issue that wasn't so noticeable at smaller font sizes but created problems at the larger font sizes used by the menus when scaled up: text with an outline or shadow effect was rendering at a smaller size than the same text without any effect.

I noticed this causing problems when the active menu had outline text but the inactive menu did not. The total text width of menu items was calculated based on the text width of active menus, and when displaying the same text without any effect on the inactive menu the text would overflow the alloted space because without any effect it rendered larger. The bigger the font size and/or menu scaling, the worse it got.

So, this happened because text without any effect was rendered using DrawString and text with effects with DrawPath. Despite specifying the same font size for both methods there was a noticeable difference.

After some digging around I found out that - for some strange reason - while DrawString measures font sizes in points as expected, DrawString uses a different unit. So I fixed the problem by converting to the correct unit when using DrawPath to draw text with the outline or shadow effect.

Text was now the same size regardless of using an effect or not, which was perfect.

But alas, this also meant that the old font size values used when drawing outline/shadow text in the iconic modules were now wrong as they resulted in much larger text sizes than before (made worse by the fact that modules are internally created as large 128x128 or 256x256 pixel images and then scaled down for display).

I noticed this in the battery module and corrected that module, but forgot all about the other modules and also the number of open instances that overlaps the icons of running applications.

Amazing what you overlook when you are not specifically looking for it - the issue was right in front of my nose, after all, but I only noticed when you pointed it out.



The settings in the theme configuration files are only referred to when the theme is loaded/applied. After that the values are stored internally - and that internal version is what the backup saves.

If you enlarge the size of fonts using the Fonts dialog and then make a backup, when you re-apply the original theme the font size will revert to what is specified in the theme configuration files, but when you restore from a backup it will revert to the size in use at the time you made that backup.

well memory being a tricky thing im still quite sure i haven't made any adjustments to the theme font (im even unsure where the setting is located) since using it, and infact in both cases font manager (if im looking at the right place) shows the same settings

http://prntscr.com/laf03e

http://prntscr.com/laf12b

LOL! Yeah Jorge, isn't it just! Haha! Just like my missing '=' - was looking for some possible error in the data, not the syntax. Maybe time to change your glasses too. LOL!

Don't know... the text color is different though.

Har har har

because different text types are selected in the two screenshots

but after playing a bit with text colors the issue seems to have dissapeared

Apologies for the delay on the new beta... getting this to be almost perfect is a hell of a lot of work.

For instance, now when you rename a Grid Stack (and you can do so from several different places, including the properties dialog) the Grid Stack's parent icon gets renamed as well. In the beta you're currently running this only happened in the other direction (i.e.; renaming the parent icon would rename the Grid Stack).

Also, I wanted Grid Stacks to remain open when applying stuff to them via their own properties dialogs (for instance, changing a theme). You have no idea how much code re-arranging this apparently simple thing required - and how difficult it was to pull it off - as docks normally close all sub-docks when you apply something via properties dialogs (at the same time I wanted to keep this behavior when not applying settings specific to an open Grid Stacks).

Keep in mind sub-docks can be nested in Grid Stacks which in turn can be nested in other sub-docks and so on up to an almost infinite level... one wrong move and the whole thing (literally!) crashed like a house of cards lol

Ok, here we go one more time, Beta 2 now: again I prefer to keep this beta private for now, only downloadable from here instead of being picked up by the Update Manager.

WARNING: Make a backup of your WorkShelf settings BEFORE installing the beta..

There were changes made to the code that deal with drag & drop and internal data structures, and although I did my best to filter out and fix any bugs, the probability of those occurring (this time with potential corruption of the contents of your Shelves and Docks) is higher than normal.

You can download:

the beta of Winstep Xtreme v18.11 from HERE

and the beta of Nexus Ultimate v18.11 from HERE.

Exit all running Winstep applications, then unzip and run setup.

Besides the improvements to the the Grid Stacks, I added a new 'Downloads' tab type, and the issue of files with non-Latin characters should now be fixed.

Let me know what you think in terms of performance of the Grid Stacks. I can, if necessary, speed them a lot (after the first opening) by caching all the icons in memory. Again, it's a speed vs. memory usage trade off.