Hello,

Is there any way to adjust the Icon size larger while maintaining the same vertical dock horizontal width?

Or a way to reduce the dock width while maintaining the same icon size?

I'm trying to reduce the space the dock takes up on the display, while still having them large enough to see with my aging eyes.

The Nexus Dock leaves about 1/8" on each side of the icons, where as Objectdock only leaves about 1mm on both sides of the icons.

Thanks!

Dock width relation to icon size is determined by the theme and its graphic/s. Short of editing the dock's configuration file there's nothing to be done about it, and editing the config file is decidedly not to be undertaken lightly unless you know exactly what you are doing.

As Nexter said, icon spacing has a lot to do with the theme itself.

This said, you CAN also adjust the spacing between icons: left click the Nexus control icon in the dock to open the Dock Properties dialog, go to the Appearance tab then click the Icon Spacing button.

Thanks for the reply NEXTER!

Is the "dock's configuration file" an ini file or Registry Key?

If an ini file, would it be located here:
C:\Users\Public\Documents\Winstep\NeXuS\Backgrounds

If a Register Key, would it be located here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\WinSTEP2000\NeXuS\Docks

Depends on the theme. Open Preferences, go to the Themes tab, select a theme and then click the Open Folder button. This will open the folder that contains the bitmaps and configuration files for that theme.

What it won't do is teach you what to do with those, and that is beyond normal help offered here.

I located and tried messing around with the config.ini settings for the Dock Theme I'm using, but it seemed to have no effect, so I started messing around with the Register and found that for a Vertical Dock, DockIconSpacing1 changes the spacing between icons and DockIconVSpacing1 changes the space on the left and right sides of the icon.

I found using a value of -5 for DockIconVSpacing1 puts the left/right sides of the icon just at the left and right edge of the Vertical Dock background.

If you only read my post RIGHT AFTER the post from Nexter you would have noticed this is EXACTLY what I told you to try, but using Preferences which validates user input.

What you are doing now - messing directly with the settings in the Registry - is going to get you in trouble as settings loaded from the Registry are NOT pre-validated. You might get into a situation where the application crashes on startup and uninstalling/re-installing becomes your only option, FYI.

While I am all for user experimentation on Winstep applications, that should ONLY be done through Preferences, which prevents you from using values that might lead to crashes, issues, etc... You have been (sternly) warned.

Your post you mentioned above only talks about adjusting the spacing between icons.

It does not mention how to adjust the left/right spacing of an icon on a vertical dock, which is EXACTLY what my original post was asking.

Adjusting the spacing between icons is EXACTLY what those options you changed in the Registry do (even the name of the settings says what it does). By decreasing the spacing between icons the margins in relation to the dock background edges OBVIOUSLY become smaller as well.

Wanna argue with me about this? I made this thing, FYI, just in case you're even thinking about it

P.S. The value of -5 you used is illegal. You will probably run into graphics or other glitches because of that, with the theme you are currently using or another theme.

No arguing going on here. I'm just stating the facts as I see them.

I'm just stating, for a Vertical Dock, your post only offered a way to change the spacing between the icons, because that is the only icon spacing adjustment the UI appears to offer, and your post did not offer a way to change the spacing between the icon and the edge of the dock, which is what I was asking for in my original post, so I found a way to do it in the Registry.

Your reply should have been 'Glad you found a solution, but I don't recommend making changes through the registry because it can cause problems. Just remember to record what you changed in the registry so you can change it back if you start running into issues.'

The only reason asked how those spacing adjustments can be made is due to pervious dock programs I've used did not have as much horizontal icon spacing for a vertical dock.

Again, that depends on the theme. Some themes will specify smaller margins for background bitmap edges.

But BESIDES that theme specified margin, there are also the icon spacing values. These values control how much empty space there is between each icon BUT they also add to the outside margins.

An example for you to understand: if icon spacing is 4 pixels, on an horizontal dock, for instance, you will have the left part of the dock background (how wide that area is is specified by the theme, but let's say 8 pixels) so you have 8 pixels at the start of the dock background + 4 pixels of the icon spacing (given an apparent margin of 8+4 = 12 pixels) + icon + 4 pixels of icon spacing + 4 pixels of icon spacing + icon + 4 pixels of icon spacing and so on.

As you can see, icon spacing also has an influence in how close an icon is to the margins of the dock background (set icon spacing to 1 and instead of a starting margin of 12 pixels you have a margin of 9 pixels, i.e.; 8+1), which is why you are seeing a result when you changed the values related to icon spacing in the Registry.

So what I said was 100% right AND was the right way to do it.

The icon spacing values were NEVER meant to be negative. The code that deals with rendering the dock does not expect these values to EVER be negative because you cannot specify a negative value when using the UI. The application does not allow you to do that and for good reason.

What happens when you bypass the UI only God knows, but I guess you will find out soon enough when you set your dock to horizontal or something like that. It might blow up your toaster.

If you really wanted to change the margins, you should have changed the THEME configuration files instead to specify lower margins for that theme's dock background bitmap itself, this would have been safer as some internal checks are done to prevent themes from crashing the application. But this would have applied ONLY to that specific theme, while changing icon spacing is universal.

It's your dock anyway and I assume you're a grown responsible adult eheh

TL,DR; Glad you found a solution, but I don't recommend making changes through the registry because it can cause problems. Just remember to record what you changed in the registry so you can change it back WHEN (NOT if) you start running into issues.

I would have liked to change the settings in the theme's config file, instead of messing with the registry, but any of the changes I made in the config file had no affect on the icon spacing or anything else.

At one point I even changed every setting in the file to 1 and it still had no affect.

I believe I was editing the correct config.ini file, because when I deleted the config.ini file I had been editing, that theme name disappeared from the Themes menu in the UI.

That's because the current theme is cached in memory and the registry. You needed to load another theme and then reload the original (now modified) theme for the changes to take effect.