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 Post subject: A big THANKYOU plus a couple of questions
PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 7:23 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:44 pm
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First, a BIG thankyou for the Nexus taskbar! I was staggered at how configurable it was, how intuitively-easy it was to do so despite the wide range of possible options, and how good the help at the point of use was! This is possibly the best-presented program I've ever seen! Wish you'd get a job as president of M$oft and sort them out! Maybe then we'd have the dream Windows we all really want. Or develop a new Linux distro - that might swing me over! None of those I've tried is anywhere near as configurable or simple to understand as your taskbar!

Anyway, I have a couple of questions: do I need the pro version (forget its name) for the following:

1. Corner bump activation. The settings in the free version clearly indicated there is such a thing but I couldn't get it to work so I assume it's only in the paid-for version? I've used corner bump for years in my own launcher. It's a no-brainer. A screen corner is a natural funnel. You can drag the mouse to any corner while looking at the ceiling and stirring your coffee! With the big advantage that being a small point you are far less likely to accidentally trigger the taskbar to popup while working near the bottom of the screen. More so since I'd put it far right on my second monitor.

2. I currently use a task launcher I wrote myself. It's a fairly plain popup pane but with text buttons set out in a grid, let's see... 7 columns by 11 down, though with spacers, I guess I've got around 40 favourites set. So, first column is yellow and is for file handlers and sys files, another is for commonly-used docs, and another for internet stuff, and so on. The point being, it's real easy to home straight in on what I want. It's highly efficient. But it's hard-wired so I recompile it if I need to add, edit, or remove a button. Only takes a couple of minutes but still, Nexus looks wayyyyy better than my effort! :D

So what I'm asking is could the paid-for version of Nexus with stacked bars provide something like that? Could I dock vertical bars together, each a different colour - or maybe horizontal would work. I'm just trying to visualise what sort of grid I might achieve with it. I've not yet tried adding a lot of icons to the free bar (should have done that first!) Just wondering what happens when it fills up? Do the icons then scroll sideways? Or does it automatically form new rows above? I mean, as you know, the Windows taskbar can be dragged up to form multiple rows but it's near-useless in every other way. I've been fighting it since Win 95. Wish I'd found Nexus long ago!

Thanks for any reply.


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 Post subject: Re: A big THANKYOU plus a couple of questions
PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 7:58 pm 
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Ok, first thing you should do is read THIS PRODUCT COMPARISON PAGE. It should give you a better idea which product (Nexus Ultimate or Winstep Xtreme) would better suit your needs.

1. Corner bump activations

Not sure why you couldn't get it to work, because even the free version supports this.

When a dock is docked to a screen edge, you can always, by default, activate it by bumping the associated screen *edge* with your mouse pointer (if accidental activations become a problem you can even use the alternate swipe activation mechanism).

Now, the dock has ANOTHER *optional* activation mechanism which will work even if the dock is not docked to a screen edge but floating on your desktop: originally intended to be a hot key combination (e.g.; CTRL+SHIFT+A), it can also be a screen edge or *corner* bump.

So, this method would have worked if you had tried it.

2. Launcher

There are many ways to skin a cat.

Right now you are thinking in terms of multiple docks stacked on top of each other or side by side, and that is the wrong way to go about it.

From your description a Shelf (tabbed dock) would be a much better solution for what you want. You could use different tabs to organize your applications or you could put them all on the same tab and make the Shelf expand to a pre-set number of icon rows.

You could also Drawers for this, putting each category of applications on a single drawer, which would remain hidden (with only a small tab showing) until you clicked on the tab, at which point it would automatically expand to show all the content.

You can also use a dock with multiple Grid Stacks, each Grid Stack holding a different category of applications.

Or you could use sub-docks for the same effect, if you simply prefer using docks.

As you can see, the world is your oyster, if only you let your mind go free. :wink:

And no, docks do NOT grow scroll buttons or scroll sideways when they fill up. That would not be a dock but something else. What docks do when they fill up is automatically shrink the icon size so everything still fits on the screen (up to a limit, of course, after which you are using it wrong and you should use some of the other available launcher types).

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Jorge Coelho
Winstep Xtreme - Xtreme Power!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies


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 Post subject: Re: A big THANKYOU plus a couple of questions
PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 9:02 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:44 pm
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Thanks. I have Nexus attached to the bottom of the screen and aligned to the right. In Activation Settings I see no option to set activate by bottom right corner. I mean, obviously it will activate by default if I move the mouse to the bottom right corner, even the Windows taskbar does that. But Nexus still activates all along the bottom of the screen to the width of the bar. How do I make it activate exclusively in the bottom right corner?

I have tried selecting the hot key Bump Bottom Right Screen Corner + Q but that makes no difference, it still activates anywhere along the bar width. Is that meant to be literally activate by holding down the selected key, say A, together with moving the mouse to the corner? Or is the key part of that disabled so only moving to the corner is the effective part? Either way, it doesn't stop the bar popping up by moving the mouse anywhere along its length by accident.


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 Post subject: Re: A big THANKYOU plus a couple of questions
PostPosted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 11:17 pm 
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Joined: Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:44 pm
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An additional problem has arisen. I tried the undock option and moved the bar to the middle of the screen. Finally I selected to dock it again. Now the bar won't activate at all. I've rebooted the machine but although it shows in Task Manager, I cannot activate the bar.

Will uninstalling and reinstalling help here?

[EDIT] - IGNORE THIS!(though it is relevant.) I woke up this morning and decided to search blindly around the screen with the mouse and found when I moved to the bottom right corner, the bar flickered briefly at the top of the screen! I must have accidentally redocked it at the top. But it's odd that it flickers when I move to bottom right - that can only be that hot key. But why does it not show permanently? Presumably because the mouse is not over the bar and I have the popdown delay very short or zero. But the fact remains I still need the corner bump to work exclusively.


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