I'm using the free version of Nexus 11.2 right now.
While the shortcut was dragged from my desktop directly to the dock, it did not work.
It did make a question mark icon on the dock. But when I checked the filen path by
right clicking on that icon, I found the path of filename is not complete.
e.g. at the end of the path, ImgBurn.lnk would become Burn.lnk ,
SpeedCommander.lnk--> EEDC~1.lnk
mpc-hc.lnk --> pc-hc.lnk , sort like that.

Then, I tried to drag a program from the real location by file explorer to the dock,
I got nothing but a empty folder icon.
That was weird. So, is this a bug or the function is not supported ?
I know I can make a APP shortcut on the dock by adding it manually.
Just want to know why I can not do that.

By the way, I use Chinese Win7 64-bit.

Another problem is that when I choose traditional Chinese to install the program,
it will use the simplified Chinese actually. Then it became unreadable.
I think it's a big problem for people who don't know what to do in that situation.

Ah, Chinese....

Going to have to become a bit technical here: the root cause of this issue is that the programming language used to make Winstep applications uses ANSI (single-byte) characters, not Unicode.

As if that didn't present enough problems already, Chinese Traditional requires a multi-byte character set (I suspect you would have the same type of problems if you had a Japanese system).

The major hurdle of all is that, even though I've made every effort to make sure Winstep applications work properly in different countries (at least the Western countries) through the use of Code Pages, I realize that Chinese (and Japanese) seem to have their own set of specific problems. It's very difficult to pinpoint the source of those problems and fix them because I don't have direct access to a Chinese system. Even if I did, I can't read Chinese characters, which means it would be very hard for me to detect when the application is outputting gibberish or real Chinese.

By your description, it seems obvious something is getting lost in the conversion of Unicode to ANSI for filenames of dropped elements. I won't be able to figure out what it is without your help and involvement (e.g.; sending you little test applets to try out until I get it right).

For instance, the feedback I got from the person who did the Simplified Chinese translation was: "Only English and Simplified Chinese can be displayed perfectly in default windows system of Simplified Chinese version. Most of other language characters, including Traditional Chinese characters, are wrongly displayed."

Something you could try is set the language of non-Unicode programs to English or Simplified Chinese in the Windows Control Panel (Control Panel -> Region and Language -> Administrative tab -> Change System Locale) and try those languages in Nexus instead (but please note that doing this will affect ALL your non-Unicode applications).

Also, I know this sounds odd, but the language chosen in the installer relates to the installer only and does not affect the language used by the application itself when you first run it. The latter will automatically use whatever language it thinks is suitable for your system based on that system's active code page.

Since your system is using Traditional Chinese, I'll have a look at why Nexus automatically selected Simplified Chinese instead of English.

Thanks for your quick reply!

I realize the single byte and double byte difference in the western language systems and
our language system. I really appreciate the Chinese language support ,though there are
some problems have to be fixed. Oppsitely, since the different language choices are provided,
people would expect the normal operation on their chosen language systems.

Although a small part of text remains english, traditional Chinese can be displayed normally,
since I use it right now. You just have to choose English manually but not the default traditional
Chinese while installing the program at first or you would end up a scrambled language
displaying in the application. Then you just can't do anything but closing the program with
Alt + F4 if you know the trick. I know it acctually display a simplfied Chinese after I used
the Microsoft AppLocale Utility to get a readable simplfied Chinese displaying. But there is still
a problem that the label of icons and the tooltips of icons are shown in scrambled simplified Chinese.
You can rename the labels but not the tooltips.

The application is quite well in many ways comparing to the other docking programs. It could be
better and the best app among the similar applications. I suggest the "Preferences UI" could be
more user-friendly. (e.g. the system tray settings is under the "Effects" menu. That is really confused
for many people including me to find the settings.) And the options of settings are too
much and too complicated to many people, they could be simplied in a well designed way.

Also, the dock is not showing nicely on the left or right side of screen if using some themes.
The icon will become really small and the gap between icons will become very large if the
"show system tray" option is enabled. The system tray icons cannot be grouped on the left or
right dock also. Many themes look terrible while using on the left (right) dock. Though a customized
design on the left (right) dock is really rare seems to be a common situation now,
I wish there will be more in the future.

If there are something I can help out with the testing, please tell me.

I tried changing the display language to English in the control panel and setting the language to English
also in the application, but still got the same problems.

I realize that, and v11.5 got a major re-organization of the UI. You now have a new 'Content' tab in Preferences, for instance:



In previous versions, and mostly because UI panels are shared between Nexus, Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme, settings were forcefully separated into 'per instance/dock' and 'global' settings. If this made some sense in Ultimate and Xtreme, where you can have multiple docks, it made no sense in Nexus free, as having a single dock means even 'per dock' settings can be regarded as global.

So the whole UI, even for Ultimate and Xtreme, was re-organized so settings are where you would logically expect them to be (for instance, the auto-hide delay, which is a global setting affecting all docks, is now next to the 'auto-hide' setting in every Dock Properties dialog instead of in the General tab of Preferences). In Ultimate and Xtreme, settings which are global now have a 'global' marker next to them (the following is a screenshot of the Nexus Ultimate UI, not Nexus free, although the behavior tab in Nexus free looks pretty much the same now but obviously without the global markers):





Not really sure what you mean by all this. Any chance of a screenshot, please?

I think I can expect the next version.


It becomes normal today. I don't know why. Anyway I will post a reply if the problem happen again.

But I found another problem: If I change themes by right-clicking the Nexus button on the dock, themes will not be applied. The dock will have each transparent icon behind each app icon.


I found it could be related to some parts:
1. the setting of "prevent themes from changing your current wallpaper"
2. the making of theme files
3. wallpaper is including in the theme files or not

Yep, that was happening with 3rd party dock themes when applied from the menu. Fixed for v11.5, thanks.