Hehehe. Soon, soon!

Nice theme, Jason! A bit too pink for me , but it's very nice.



Ah, you probably have no idea the difference that can make. I have a multi-monitor system and that Aero screenshot above was taken on my second monitor (the main monitor's resolution is 1920x1440, way too large for a screenshot), whose video output is provided by a VERY old Matrox Millennium II card. If you looked at the CPU meter, you might have noticed that WorkShelf was using 38% of the CPU capacity - move everything to the main monitor, however, and WorkShelf's CPU usage drops to a very low 0-3%!

This is just to show how important a video card is. The reason why WorkShelf uses so little CPU in the main monitor is because the graphics card responsible for its output is able to hardware accelerate most of the graphic functions. The poor Matrox card is just too old for the new stuff, and I suspect most graphic functions there are performed in software mode only.

Don't think that my main video card is anything extrarordinary though - it's a low end GeForce FX 5600 that is showing its age already too.

Okay, so I've been had at work (or is that hardly working?) at updating the Sputnik theme to incorporate some of Jorges latest goodies. Here's the results:

Awesome looking update! It would be great to have a lot of the classic themes updated like this.

Thanks, I've been working on Sputnik off and on for a while, now, working on getting the modlues up and running, and the WS tabs in the new non-shelf-spanning format. Then Jorge came up with the long awaited alpha transparency, so I jumped all over it. I'll probably go back through some of the other themes I've worked on in the past and update them, as well. I actually tried to do my own partial transparency on one of the firs themes I ever made. I did it by making every other pixel pink. Didn't work out nearly as well as this.

REMEMBER that, although I cannot force you to, you should ALWAYS provide a non per-pixel alpha transparent theme version as well. If you do not, Win9x and NT4 users will NOT be able to run your theme. For this all you have to do is to provide non-PNG bitmaps versions of the PNG bitmaps (i.e. on Win9x/NT4 systems WS will automatically use the non-PNG files instead).

Registered NextSTART and/or WorkShelf users will have a private beta available in 2 or 3 days. A public beta will be issued when NextSTART also supports per pixel alpha transparency. When that happens, everybody will be able to upgrade - and expect updates to be issued often!

From now on, anybody who registers Winstep Full Pak will also get a free Winstep Xtreme key.

Full Winstep Aero suite:

When NextStart has PNG usage as well I'll be a very happy guy That looks great.

This is another theme I've put together. Lately I've been making my skins use small pixel fonts so I thought I'd make one for the fans of large The size of the modules may be too large for some folks, but as I have 2 monitors I can happily spare the space

I haven't made the NextStart parts yet for either of my new themes and I haven't made BMP versions either. I should probably work on that soon. Although this theme wouldn't work in the old versions as the modules rely on transparency.

Jason, that theme's looking VERY nice. I like the free-floating tabs and module parts (bubbles?).

Jorge, is it just coincidence, or are you using tabs that span the width of the shelf?!? Better watch out for the random extra pixel in the mini tabs.

Ahah, I know how much you hate those, but they don't affect that kind of theme because the mini-tab edges are ALWAYS aligned with the body edges (unless you change the tab alignment, in which case I think we need a couple of extra 'shelf body corner' bitmaps).

I also noticed you're all using 48x48 icons for the icon in the weather module - well, you can now use PNG files instead. In fact, the next update will feature ico files AND 128x128 PNG weather images, which look great when scaled down.

Personally I'm using the Konfabulator weather images (128x128 PNG files only), and I love them! Unfortunately, I think it is illegal to re-distribute them - specially now that Konfabulator has been aquired by Yahoo. Damn, heh? -> support@winstep.net

This really looks good, Jorge. If you can tell me when it'll be available for download I'll turn my computer off until then. Everything else looks bland now.

No need to turn your computer off. It's out now.

Just so you know I haven't been sitting on my butt doing nothing :



Two things to notice: NextSTART menus already support per pixel alpha and, on the functionality front,
thumbnails of image and video files are now displayed on context menus. This is extremelly useful when
you are using NextSTART to browse folders, and is something I had been wanting to add for a long time.

Other minor enhancements already implemented are a new Ripple menu animation and much smoother
menu animations on Windows 2000 and XP systems (plus some other minor stuff and bug fixes).

Regarding the Aero theme in the screenshot, I think the menus would look a lot better if the titlebars
and endcaps had a 'flat' glassy look, like in that thumbnail of the real thing. Don't like much having
the menu body semi-transparent on active menus either, I will probably make it fully opaque in the end.

I like the level of transparency in the first menu section (dark). Does this also mean you can have soft corners, drop shadows etc in the menus?

But the new file details menu is awesome. That adds a whole new level of cool to NextStart. Makes it much more useable.