Is it possible to change the speed with which WorkShelf appears? I currently have Workshelf docked to the top of my screen and set to appear when I mouse over that edge of the screen. However, it slides out slowly from the top edge, and only when it finishes its sliding animation am I able to use it and click on it. Is there a way to change or disable this sliding animation so that I can simply use it instantly any time I mouse over the area, in the same way that Macintosh users can?

Hi!

Yes there is. Open WorkShelf Preferences and go to the Global Preferences tab. Click on the leftmost arrow in the Animation Speed section and press Ok.

What are your system specs, by the way?

Great, thanks! Now I'm trying to find how to change the amount of time the window remains open after mousing away from it.

My system is a 2.4 Ghz quad-core Intel CPU, a Nvidia 9800+ GTX graphics card, 3GB DDR2 RAM, and Windows XP SP3.

WorkShelf Preferences -> Shelf Preferences -> Collapse Options -> Auto Collapse Delay.

Note that the shelf will NOT collapse until another window is made the foreground window. Only then does the timer start counting.

In relation to the shelf being too slow sliding out of the screen edge with the default speed setting, I'm begining to suspect some systems are unable to set the timer resolution to 1 ms, remaining at the default 10 ms. This could potentially result in the shelf taking twice as long to collapse/uncollapse than it should.

Never mind, thanks, figured it out! Some systems took longer than 5 or 10ms to render a single collapse animation frame, which resulted in all times being off and the overall animation taking much longer than expected.

Added some timing adjusting code to fix the problem and uploaded a silent update to Xtreme 8.9.

Even when I select the icon to the far left (the clock seeming to point to 5 past noon), there's still a several-second delay before it collapses. Is there any way to make it instantaneous?

Make sure you are setting the 'Auto Collapse Delay' and not the 'Activation Delay'. Also, remember that the shelf will ONLY collapse when another window is now active (i.e. open the shelf, then click on another window on your desktop to bring it forward - here, with the leftmost clock being selected, the Shelf collapses nearly instantaneously).

Also, go to the Winstep web site and download the 8.9 update - I made some changes to it today that have to do with the collapse/un-collapse timings.

Ah, I see now. So once I mouse onto the bar, until I click on another window, it takes like 5 seconds before it vanishes, but when I do click on another window, the Auto Collapse Delay setting takes effect.

Is there any way to modify the length of time it takes to collapse if you don't click on another window?

Actually that is not what happens: the shelf will (or should) stay indefinitely open until you click on another window _OR_ while the mouse pointer is over a visible part of it. If, in your case, the shelf collapses after 5 seconds regardless, then maybe something else is stealing the focus after 5 seconds?

Could you post a screenshot of your desktop here (or send one to the Winstep support address) so I can check something out?

Also, remember you can always manually collapse the shelf by clicking on the right mini-tab.

In the previous version (8.5), the shelf would collapse regardless of it being the foreground window or not, as long as the mouse pointer was not over it, but I changed this behavior for 8.9.