So, for the past few releases I have been tying up all the loose ends. I've implemented many things that had been on the to-do list for a very long time.

Now there are three major loose ends left:

1. The Winstep Theme Builder.
2. The Winstep Gallery.
3. The Winstep User Guide.

As I mentioned in the v25.9 thread (so I will be repeating myself a bit here), I think the next release is going to focus on integrating the stand-alone alpha of the Winstep Theme Builder into the applications themselves, and bringing it up to completion.

Instead of mixing skinning settings with normal settings as was the case until the v9.5 release all those years ago, the plan is to treat the integrated Theme Builder as if it is a completely separate application.

This has the advantage of not cluttering the rest of the UI with settings only 1% of users might actually use - and by keeping it separate from the rest of the UI it does not get "in the way" either. You will be able to invoke it as you can the Alarm Manager now - both via a single button in Preferences and also as an Internal Command.

The fact that the main application and the Theme Builder will share the same code will also help tremendously in the simplicity of its implementation, as well as on how it will be able to interact with the rest of the application.

The Theme Builder version invoked under WorkShelf will allow you to skin docks, shelves and desktop modules, under Nexus Ultimate, docks and shelves, and under Nexus, only docks. The Theme Builder version invoked under NextSTART will allow you to skin menus, the NextSTART taskbar and hotspot buttons.

The Theme Builder itself, as was the case in the alpha, will be a mix of settings and a skinning tutorial.

Sounds great. I hope it has the same level of features that 9.5 had for Nexus, Workshelf and modules.

ALSO - In the next update in-between, please also consider with the saved orientation settings for disk drive whether Horizontal or vertical that you added, to additionally save whether the user selected a Drive or a Torus. At least consider it please.
Thanks

I considered it and I am not going to do it, sorry. Iconic module style is a user choice and will remain a user choice.

Hopefully you will be able to identify, and resolve, the double-click issue as well

Thanks for the reply but we are not communicating. the entire suggestion was user-choice based. They select the icon on one theme (Disk for Theme 1) and in theme 2 (Select ring).

They go back to theme 1 and Winstep FORCES them to have the ring they recently selected from theme 2. There is nothing about me here. It is ALL user choice based. Saving their settings won't make any difference so the user with icon choices has no choice and that is extremely obvious that currently Winstep will not let the user save their icon choice per theme. Again, there is no 'me' in this. It's an observation at user level.

But ok. I won't raise it again someone else can.

You are thinking in terms of a theme author ("oh, this theme looks better with a ring style, but this one looks better with a drive style"). That is not how most users think, they simply select the style they like best for a particular module and stick to it.

So, the answer is still no.



Fair enough. I don't think anyone else will though.

You can now drag & drop files/documents into UWP applications to open them in that application, just like you already could with desktop apps.

In the Item Properties dialog for UWP apps you could specify an argument, but the ability to open a document in a UWP app simply by dropping it into that UWP app in docks, etc, was still (sadly) missing.

Don't use and don't even have any UWP crap - all removed as part of my minimal Windows install.

Notepad is now a UWP app. They took the Win32 version behind the barn and shot it dead in the head.

Here is something I just thought to add to next version which I think could actually be pretty useful given how bad and useless Windows Search on the Start Menu is these days:

A new "All Programs" shelf tab type that would display ALL the applications in the Windows Start Menu piled up together (i.e. no folders, just all shortcuts displayed in alphabetical order). This by itself is not very useful, but couple it with the shelf's Search feature (you begin typing and it filters out anything that doesn't match the mask) and I think it might be something actually worth adding.

At least it seems to me that it is much better than the Windows Start Menu complete mess of a Search feature.

What say you guys?

LOL! Yeah, that figures, the barstewards. Was wondering why it had gone...

sounds like it should be useful to a lot of users. Alas, not this one - not a lot of apps left for one thing, for another just wouldn't suit my MO.

I would definitely use that feature.

Already working on it.

Since version 8 Windows has a vortual AppsFolder that shows all applications installed on the system (including UWP apps). I tried that low hanging fruit and it does do what it says.

Unfortunately all entries - even those pointing to Win32 applications - show up as UWP apps and despite launching ok they cannot be "converted" to actual file system shortcuts (ie; it is as if a Firefox entry in the Appsfolder is an entirely different animal from the actual Firefox Win32 executable).

Since I expect this tab will be used as a source to drag & drop shortcuts to the dock etc and this UWP format breaks running indicators, context menu options, and other things, I cannot use this method.

So, I am going to have to do this the hard way. Parse the All Programs Start Menu structure including sub-folders (not as easy as it sounds for several reasons), merge that with the UWP apps list, and add separators with letter icons built "on-the-fly" between each letter group so these can be quickly located when searching manually.

Seems like a lot of hassle! How about a pukkha "start menu" that automagically sorts installed apps into sensible categories (e.g., Accessories, Education, Games, Graphics, Internet, Office, Other, Science, Sound & Video, System Tools, Utilities), like we have in many Linux distros? Probably an even bigger PITA in Windows, though fairly straightforward in Linux.