Hi, I bought Winstep the other day and so far I'm pretty happy. Was figuring it out and setting it up for awhile last night. I have some questions and ideas.

My most important suggestions:

So is it right you can only have one shelf? (Can you add multiple shelves? Please tell me how!) The thing that I really don't like is it seems the settings have to be applied to all tabs. Each tab should be able to have its own settings for icon size, frame, label, etc. That is basic and important, because I want one tab to be a launcher with big quick buttons, and another tab to display folder contents with small icons with labels.

The insert and delete button should be used for adding and removing entries from the docks and shelf. Really, this is quite important as I have many, many things to add, and it's "right click, new item, item" every time. One button press is better for add/delete.

Clicking the tabs on shelf opens, but doesn't close them again. This should close them again. It seems like a small thing, but I am very used to that kind of behavior and I hate having to push the little minimize thing instead. You actually do it right with the menus and docks.

Creating more than one taskbar instance would be nice so I could have a taskbar on both monitors, as Vista doesn't allow this. Or maybe some other ideas you could do with this too. Also, doing the Windows 7 tab glow thing would be cool, where each icon determines the color of glow. Also when moving the dock items, if you hold one icon over another it should go under that icon, not the opposite. Also a calendar would be really nice, I don't want to have to use other software for one.

Other than these I am very pleased. Pretty and powerful software.

About the shelf tabs not closing automatically: It is intended behavior for not collapsing automatically after clicking. It does automatically collapse if you use mouse-over on the shelf

I do agree with your first suggestion (and I pointed that out to the developer as well).

I can't understand what you are saying. I have it set to close automatically when the mouse moves off the shelf, after a short delay. It never closes when I mouse-over the shelf, and I wouldn't really want it to. But almost everything uses the open/close cycle, one click opens another click closes another click opens, etc. This is how his menu sub-folders work.


If we can't have multiple shelves then tabs should be able to have differing properties.

I was talking about if you use mousing over to open the shelf instead of clicking.

First of all, let me remind everyone that Winstep applications are pretty much in a constant state of 'work in progress'. Not because they are unfinished, but because there are always a TON of new ideas and features in the to-do list waiting to be implemented.

Unfortunately resources, as everybody knows, are limited, so they can't all be implemented at the same time. Thus, with each release, Winstep applications evolve a little bit more towards that "perfect" goal.



Yes, currently you can only have one Shelf. But, by looking at the Docks & Shelves tab in Preferences, you can already perceive that the intention is to be able to have multiple Shelves. Implementing this feature, however, implies a LOT of work and a lot of changes, not only because the code that is there was meant for a single Shelf but also because this will depend on other features being added first (such as the ability to have vertical Shelves).

The ability to have multiple shelves alone will probably merith a full new release by itself, but, until then, there are other features which have higher priority. So, it will come, it's just hard to say when.

As for each Shelf tab having it's own settings, that wouldn't work (and, with multiple shelves, would be essentially unnecessary) for a variety of reasons: first, skins are made with the whole shelf sharing the same theme, second, shelf height is related to the size of the icons, etc...



Insertion of new items is more efficiently accomplished via drag & drop - you can even drop multiple items into the Shelf or docks.

As for removal of items, in the Shelf you can mouseover an item and press the DEL key. This, unfortunately, will not work in docks (not sure why I never implemented it for them, I probably will for v10.8 ). As an alternative, you can always drag & drop the item into a recycler module.



You, sir, are absolutely right (good idea!), and I guess I'll implement this for v10.8 as well: you click again the currently open tab header, and the Shelf minimizes. Click a different tab header and the shelf switches to that tab.



Multiple taskbars (one per monitor) and the ability to reserve screen space when the taskbar is on monitors other than the primary is high on the to-do list. Again, this is a lot of work, as the code already there was meant for a single taskbar. Not only that, but when you change what is already working, you risk introducing a ton of new bugs, which is another reason why I'm weary of adding this soon.

A calendar module is also high on the to-do list. Would be nice if it could also be made compatible with Rainlender skins.


Thanks!

Implemented in v10.8.

Thanks, winstep, very nice replies.

Turns out I am not so upset about the shelf thing as I end up using the menu system more, with the pop out folders, but such a quick fix the for tabs is very appreciated.