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 Post subject: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* released
PostPosted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 7:41 pm 
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Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:30 pm
Posts: 12286
Winstep Xtreme users can download the new beta from:

http://www.winstep.net/xtreme-beta.zip

Nexus Ultimate users can download the new beta from:

http://www.winstep.net/ultimate-beta.zip

IMPORTANT: This beta package is an update and MUST be installed on top of a previous Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v15.9 or later installation!

This is a beta. Please do not share this link outside this forum.


Before running the Setup file, remember to exit all Winstep applications first.

###


Most of what's new in this beta is described in THIS TOPIC HERE.

Highlights are new battery module, clock alarms, ability to minimize windows to the dock, much smoother drag & drop operations on the dock, 10 new mouseover/launch/attention effects, new Effects Panel, improved desktop module scaling (Xtreme only), new CD Control internal command, left clicking the dock's control icon now opens that dock's Properties panel, changing an icon now smoothly fades out the old version while the new fades in (also visible when delay-rendering thumbnail documents), weather module is immediately updated after returning from sleep or hibernation, major re-organization of Preferences.

In relation the previous beta, besides the above: added voice and sound notifications to battery events, new battery 'glass' mode, ability to customize the battery icon with multi-state PNG strips, battery module now flashes for a second when the power fails.

IMPORTANT: This new version disables the 'Notify me of public betas' setting in the Advanced tab of Preferences.

This is because it was previously enabled by default and it should not have been. Users must explicitly opt-in for those. Disabling it now for all users ensures this and opens the way for future public beta notifications via the Winstep Update Manager (after the official release).

If you wish to opt-in to receive automatic notifications of public betas via the Winstep Update Manager you must re-enable this option after installation of the v16.2 beta.

PLEASE, YOU *MUST* TEST AND REPORT BACK on the new CD Control internal command.

Clicking on it should toggle the CD drive's door from open to closed and vice-versa. It is this toggling that needs to be tested with various drives: since the system provides no way to know if the drive's door is currently open or closed, the IC command first tries to close the door - the API function that does this does not return an error if the door is already closed (which doesn't help) but it does *usually* return *much faster* than normal if so. It is this timing difference that is used to determine if the door was already closed or not, in which case a command to open the door is then issued.

This timing difference needs to be tested with various CD drive models.

If you have more than one CD-ROM drive on your system, you can select which drive the command applies to by right clicking on the IC's shortcut and selecting 'Item Properties'.

Please also give some feedback on the new effects and the usefulness of the new Effects Panel, etc... There are also new settings to control the performance vs. quality vs. memory usage of the effects in the Performance Settings dialog in the Advanced tab of Preferences.

_________________
Jorge Coelho
Winstep Xtreme - Xtreme Power!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 7:47 pm 
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Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2004 8:30 pm
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Full list of changes from the previous official v15.9 release:

--------------------------

Nexus Ultimate Version 16.2 build 1021


New Features:


* Updated the French language file.

* Updated Italian language file (incomplete).

* Updated Spanish language file.

* Updated Indonesian language file.

* Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file (incomplete).

* Greatly increased the odds of getting the user's correct location for the weather module based on IP address.

* The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.

* Updated the list of Internet Time Servers used by the clock module.

* The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'. This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.

* Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the dock.

* Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).

* Added backup Yahoo Weather feed to make up for the fact that the Google Weather feed is no longer available. Current available feeds are NOOA for current conditions plus Weather.com, MSN Weather and Yahoo Weather for current/forecast conditions.

* Updated the Net Statistics dialog which still showed the old UI.

* Icon shifting to make room for new items being dragged into the dock is now a bit smoother than before.

* Improved the smoothness of adding items to and re-arranging items in the dock.

* Changes to the dock's position now make it smoothly 'slide in' into the new screen location instead of instantly jumping into place.

* Added 'Auto-Detect Location' to the right click context menu of the Weather module, to update the user's current location based on his IP address.

* Clock settings panel now shows previews for both the analog and digital clock style.

* Added Alarms/Event Scheduling to the Clock Module. Alarms can now be created to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs/internal commands at specific times, once or periodically. Alarm events can optionally wake the computer up if Sleeping or Hibernating. Users can build their own MP3/WMA playlists or use existing M3U playlists for musical alarms, which also feature Snooze and Easy-Wake (sound volume increases with time) abilities.

* Completely re-organized module's internal structures so it's much easier to add new modules in the future.

* Added new battery/UPS monitor module. Module includes a vertical and an horizontal style and optionally display current battery charge and runtime (when available). Ability to log power events and display a warning or run an application/internal command on low and critical battery level events.

* Changed the default 'Attention' effect from 'Flash' to 'Sonic Boom'.

* Average CpU usage is now monitored and an alert displayed if Nexus consistently uses over 90% of one core for over 5 minutes.

* Weather information is now cached for an hour to prevent hammering the weather servers unnecessarily.

* If one of the weather feeds being used provides sunrise and sunset times, the weather module is now able to determine more accurately whether to display a Sun or Moon icon.

* Icons of currently running applications on the left side of the dock now also display the number of instances when the 'Combine dock icons with running applications' and 'Group similar windows into a single icon' settings are both enabled.

+++

* The battery module in the dock/shelf now flashes for one second when the battery transitions from AC Power to On Battery.

* Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.

* Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default. The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.

* Added visual 'glass mode' (transparent battery) option to the battery module.

* Added ability to disable the battery charging animation.

* Added battery voice and sound notifications for battery events.

* Added new 'CD Control' internal command. Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.

* Reorganized the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties panel and added 'Activation Settings' and 'Auto-Hide Settings' panels.

* You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.

* The Weather module information is now automatically updated immediately after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.

* Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.

* Added a 'Capture Desktop Settings' configuration panel to the right click menu of the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.

* Moved the customized 'Explosion animation' settings to the Recycler Module Settings panel.

* Re-organized the Advanced Settings panel (Preferences -> General -> More Options).

* Added new 'Fade in' mouseover, launch and attention effect. All icons are semi-transparent and fade-in to opaque when you mouse over them, then
fade out to semi-transparent as you mouse away. Initial transparency can be modified by changing normal icon transparency, otherwise it's 50%.

* Floating mouseover icon labels for a Shelf set to display no labels below the icons now appear below the icon instead of outside the Shelf.

* For security reasons the clock module now displays a warning dialog if the time difference between the system clock and the Time Server is larger than 15 hours, giving the user a choice to adjust the time anyway or otherwise cancelling the operation. Cancelling opens the Date and Time Windows dialog (so the user can manually change the date and time) as well as the Clock Module Settings Panel (so the user can alternatively disable automatic time synchronization).

* Left clicking a dock's control icon now opens the Dock Properties dialog for that dock.

* 'Flash' and 'Jump' are now avaiable as Mouseover, Launch and Attention effects.

* Switched the names of the 'Bounce' and 'Jump' effects.

* Renamed the 'Fire' effect to 'Explode'.

* Effects can now be selected and configured from the new 'Effects Panel'. The new panel allows you to visualize effects before applying them.

* The Mouseover, Launch and Attention items of the main right click context menu for docks and the Shelf now open the new Effects Panel instead of displaying a menu with the names of the effects.

* Added nine additional mouseover, launch and attention effects: Shake, Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubble, Plasma and Wormhole.

* When the icon of an item is changed (either automatically when rendering document thumbnails or manually by the user via drag & drop or the Item Properties Editor) the old version now smoothly fades out while the new version fades into place.

* Added new settings to the Performance vs. Memory Usage panel. The new settings allow the user to control quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.

* To help troubleshooting, clicking the 'Test Voice' and 'Test Sounds' buttons in the Sound tab in Preferences now displays a warning dialog if the application has not detected a sound card in the system.

* Major re-organization of the Position and Behavior tabs in the Properties panels of the Shelf and docks to fix a common complaint that some related settings were scattered throughout the UI, which made locating them and understanding their relation difficult. Related settings are now grouped together, even though this means some of them will now appear more than once at different places in the UI.

* If the Weather.com weather feed is down, the next resort is now the Yahoo feed, since it has sunrise and sunset times which the MSN feed does not. The MSN feed is now the last resort.

* Renamed the 'Customize' button in the Themes tab to 'Fonts'.

* Added a 'Fonts' button to the Appearence tab of the Shelf Properties dialog to open the Fonts Manager dialog. This allows the user to customize the text used in the Shelf for the current theme and should solve the problem of the user confusing this with the font settings used for the external label when the number of icon text lines in the Shelf was set to zero.



Fixes:


* Live window preview thumbnails were not going away when the user moved the pointer off the dock.

* The 'Disable reflections when dock is vertical' option would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.

* Right clicking on a live preview thumbnail would show a context menu, but the menu would close itself automatically almost immediately after.

* No file context menu would open if you right-clicked a file of a 'Browse Container' or 'Browse' sub-menu.

* The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Español' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.

* Fixed bug that could cause the Net Meter module not to show all existing network adapters.

* The Item Properties Editor panel was not automatically changing the icon when editing the path of Folder type items.

* Fixed several issues with the dock becoming wonky when dragging items over it.

* Double clicking just outside the left mini-tab when the Shelf was collapsed would cause it to open with an empty tab.

* Menus displaying a list of voice and sound themes no longer display a question mark thumbnail.

* Themes without a thumbnail now display a generic theme icon thumbnail instead of a question mark icon.

* The attention effect was not activating for items pined to the dock when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.

* The attention effect didn't affect the correct task icon when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.

* On multi-monitor systems hiding or showing a dock would leave visible left-overs on the other monitor if the dock was attached to a common screen edge.

* When double clicking a Shelf tab to fully expand the Shelf, the Shelf would only resize smoothly if attached to the bottom screen edge.

* Native Nexus 'Tiles' skinning mode themes with the 'Zoom tiles when magnifying' option were not being rendered properly when the dock magnified.

* The Winstep Update Manager was not warning the user when a new version falled outside his paid update subscription period.

* The option to make the Wanda module swim on the desktop was visible in the Wanda settings dialog, but shouldn't be since it's for the desktop module version of Wanda and Nexus Ultimate does not support desktop modules.

* The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.

* Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.

* The 'Always at the base of the icon' option for running indicators would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.

* The clock module no longer syncs the time with the Internet Time Servers every time the application starts regardless of the check interval.

* Dropping a shortcut into a Folder type Shelf tab was moving/copying the source file instead of the shortcut itself.

* It wasn't possible to make a copy of a file via CTRL + Drop in a Folder type Shelf, the drop would simply be ignored.

* Changes made in the Clock Speech and Sound Settings dialog of the Clock Module Settings panel would still be effective even if the user later pressed Cancel in the Settings panel.

* Maximized Google Chrome windows were being interpreted as full screen windows, which caused the application to automatically stop reacting to edge bumps (necessary so edge bumps are not accidentally activated when playing a full screen game, for instance).

* The 'Combine dock icons with running applications' setting always became enabled after a restart of the application.

* The Weather module was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.

* The 24 hour or AM/PM format was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.

* The digital clock module was displaying '12 AM' when it should display '12 PM'.

* Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x

* The contents of an open weather forecast sub-dock were not being updated when weather information was refreshed.

+++

* Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).

* Changes to the custom module icons were sometimes not being saved.

* The Silent Period combo boxes were showing '12 AM' as '0 AM' and '12 PM' as '12 AM'.

* The battery charge levels in the demo animations for the battery module were going to negative values if a language other than English was selected.

* Fixed bug which would prevent some modules from using a customized bitmap without restarting the application if the bitmap had been updated but the filename remained the same.

* Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead. This allows the user to specifically run customized shortcuts.

* The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.

* Sub-docks now complete the Launch animation (if any) before automatically closing.

* The new 'smoothly move into place' feature, combined with the 'new item' animation, was causing items added to the end of the dock to momentarily appear outside the same.

* Re-arranging tasklist items in the dock via drag & drop was broken.

* Fixed some problems with the 'remove item from dock' animation if the mouse pointer was at the end or begining of the dock and the dock was magnifying.

* Customizing the icon of a task item via drag & drop of an ICO or PNG image could apply the new icon to the wrong item under certain circumstances.

* Fixed problem where the mouseover effect would 'stick' to an icon and keep playing even though the mouse pointer was no longer over the dock.

* Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of system tray and task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion list. Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.


--------------------------

WorkShelf Version 16.2 build 1021


New Features:


* Updated the French language file.

* Updated Italian language file (incomplete).

* Updated Spanish language file.

* Updated Indonesian language file.

* Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file (incomplete).

* Greatly increased the odds of getting the user's correct location for the weather module based on IP address.

* The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.

* Updated the list of Internet Time Servers used by the clock module.

* The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'. This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.

* Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the dock.

* Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).

* Added backup Yahoo Weather feed to make up for the fact that the Google Weather feed is no longer available. Current available feeds are NOOA for current conditions plus Weather.com, MSN Weather and Yahoo Weather for current/forecast conditions.

* Updated the Net Statistics dialog which still showed the old UI.

* Icon shifting to make room for new items being dragged into the dock is now a bit smoother than before.

* Improved the smoothness of adding items to and re-arranging items in the dock.

* Changes to the dock's position now make it smoothly 'slide in' into the new screen location instead of instantly jumping into place.

* Added 'Auto-Detect Location' to the right click context menu of the Weather module, to update the user's current location based on his IP address.

* Clock settings panel now shows previews for both the analog and digital clock style.

* Added Alarms/Event Scheduling to the Clock Module. Alarms can now be created to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs/internal commands at specific times, once or periodically. Alarm events can optionally wake the computer up if Sleeping or Hibernating. Users can build their own MP3/WMA playlists or use existing M3U playlists for musical alarms, which also feature Snooze and Easy-Wake (sound volume increases with time) abilities.

* Completely re-organized module's internal structures so it's much easier to add new modules in the future.

* Added new battery/UPS monitor module. Module includes a vertical and an horizontal style and optionally display current battery charge and runtime (when available). Ability to log power events and display a warning or run an application/internal command on low and critical battery level events.

* Changed the default 'Attention' effect from 'Flash' to 'Sonic Boom'.

* Average CpU usage is now monitored and an alert displayed if Nexus consistently uses over 90% of one core for over 5 minutes.

* Weather information is now cached for an hour to prevent hammering the weather servers unnecessarily.

* If one of the weather feeds being used provides sunrise and sunset times, the weather module is now able to determine more accurately whether to display a Sun or Moon icon.

* Icons of currently running applications on the left side of the dock now also display the number of instances when the 'Combine dock icons with running applications' and 'Group similar windows into a single icon' settings are both enabled.

+++

* The battery module in the dock/shelf now flashes for one second when the battery transitions from AC Power to On Battery.

* Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.

* Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default. The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.

* Added visual 'glass mode' (transparent battery) option to the battery module.

* Added ability to disable the battery charging animation.

* Added battery voice and sound notifications for battery events.

* Added new 'CD Control' internal command. Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.

* Reorganized the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties panel and added 'Activation Settings' and 'Auto-Hide Settings' panels.

* You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.

* The Weather module information is now automatically updated immediately after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.

* Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.

* Added a 'Capture Desktop Settings' configuration panel to the right click menu of the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.

* Moved the customized 'Explosion animation' settings to the Recycler Module Settings panel.

* Re-organized the Advanced Settings panel (Preferences -> General -> More Options).

* Added new 'Fade in' mouseover, launch and attention effect. All icons are semi-transparent and fade-in to opaque when you mouse over them, then
fade out to semi-transparent as you mouse away. Initial transparency can be modified by changing normal icon transparency, otherwise it's 50%.

* Floating mouseover icon labels for a Shelf set to display no labels below the icons now appear below the icon instead of outside the Shelf.

* For security reasons the clock module now displays a warning dialog if the time difference between the system clock and the Time Server is larger than 15 hours, giving the user a choice to adjust the time anyway or otherwise cancelling the operation. Cancelling opens the Date and Time Windows dialog (so the user can manually change the date and time) as well as the Clock Module Settings Panel (so the user can alternatively disable automatic time synchronization).

* Left clicking a dock's control icon now opens the Dock Properties dialog for that dock.

* 'Flash' and 'Jump' are now avaiable as Mouseover, Launch and Attention effects.

* Switched the names of the 'Bounce' and 'Jump' effects.

* Renamed the 'Fire' effect to 'Explode'.

* Effects can now be selected and configured from the new 'Effects Panel'. The new panel allows you to visualize effects before applying them.

* The Mouseover, Launch and Attention items of the main right click context menu for docks and the Shelf now open the new Effects Panel instead of displaying a menu with the names of the effects.

* Added nine additional mouseover, launch and attention effects: Shake, Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubble, Plasma and Wormhole.

* When the icon of an item is changed (either automatically when rendering document thumbnails or manually by the user via drag & drop or the Item Properties Editor) the old version now smoothly fades out while the new version fades into place.

* Added new settings to the Performance vs. Memory Usage panel. The new settings allow the user to control quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.

* To help troubleshooting, clicking the 'Test Voice' and 'Test Sounds' buttons in the Sound tab in Preferences now displays a warning dialog if the application has not detected a sound card in the system.

* Major re-organization of the Position and Behavior tabs in the Properties panels of the Shelf and docks to fix a common complaint that some related settings were scattered throughout the UI, which made locating them and understanding their relation difficult. Related settings are now grouped together, even though this means some of them will now appear more than once at different places in the UI.

* If the Weather.com weather feed is down, the next resort is now the Yahoo feed, since it has sunrise and sunset times which the MSN feed does not. The MSN feed is now the last resort.

* Renamed the 'Customize' button in the Themes tab to 'Fonts'.

* Added a 'Fonts' button to the Appearence tab of the Shelf Properties dialog to open the Fonts Manager dialog. This allows the user to customize the text used in the Shelf for the current theme and should solve the problem of the user confusing this with the font settings used for the external label when the number of icon text lines in the Shelf was set to zero.



Fixes:


* Live window preview thumbnails were not going away when the user moved the pointer off the dock.

* The 'Disable reflections when dock is vertical' option would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.

* Right clicking on a live preview thumbnail would show a context menu, but the menu would close itself automatically almost immediately after.

* No file context menu would open if you right-clicked a file of a 'Browse Container' or 'Browse' sub-menu.

* The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Español' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.

* Fixed bug that could cause the Net Meter module not to show all existing network adapters.

* The Item Properties Editor panel was not automatically changing the icon when editing the path of Folder type items.

* Fixed several issues with the dock becoming wonky when dragging items over it.

* Double clicking just outside the left mini-tab when the Shelf was collapsed would cause it to open with an empty tab.

* Menus displaying a list of voice and sound themes no longer display a question mark thumbnail.

* Themes without a thumbnail now display a generic theme icon thumbnail instead of a question mark icon.

* The attention effect was not activating for items pined to the dock when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.

* The attention effect didn't affect the correct task icon when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.

* On multi-monitor systems hiding or showing a dock would leave visible left-overs on the other monitor if the dock was attached to a common screen edge.

* When double clicking a Shelf tab to fully expand the Shelf, the Shelf would only resize smoothly if attached to the bottom screen edge.

* Native Nexus 'Tiles' skinning mode themes with the 'Zoom tiles when magnifying' option were not being rendered properly when the dock magnified.

* The Winstep Update Manager was not warning the user when a new version falled outside his paid update subscription period.

* The option to make the Wanda module swim on the desktop was visible in the Wanda settings dialog, but shouldn't be since it's for the desktop module version of Wanda and Nexus Ultimate does not support desktop modules.

* The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.

* Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.

* The 'Always at the base of the icon' option for running indicators would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.

* The clock module no longer syncs the time with the Internet Time Servers every time the application starts regardless of the check interval.

* Dropping a shortcut into a Folder type Shelf tab was moving/copying the source file instead of the shortcut itself.

* It wasn't possible to make a copy of a file via CTRL + Drop in a Folder type Shelf, the drop would simply be ignored.

* Changes made in the Clock Speech and Sound Settings dialog of the Clock Module Settings panel would still be effective even if the user later pressed Cancel in the Settings panel.

* Maximized Google Chrome windows were being interpreted as full screen windows, which caused the application to automatically stop reacting to edge bumps (necessary so edge bumps are not accidentally activated when playing a full screen game, for instance).

* The 'Combine dock icons with running applications' setting always became enabled after a restart of the application.

* The Weather module was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.

* The 24 hour or AM/PM format was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.

* The digital clock module was displaying '12 AM' when it should display '12 PM'.

* Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x

* The contents of an open weather forecast sub-dock were not being updated when weather information was refreshed.

+++

* Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).

* Changes to the custom module icons were sometimes not being saved.

* The Silent Period combo boxes were showing '12 AM' as '0 AM' and '12 PM' as '12 AM'.

* The battery charge levels in the demo animations for the battery module were going to negative values if a language other than English was selected.

* Fixed bug which would prevent some modules from using a customized bitmap without restarting the application if the bitmap had been updated but the filename remained the same.

* Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead. This allows the user to specifically run customized shortcuts.

* The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.

* Sub-docks now complete the Launch animation (if any) before automatically closing.

* The new 'smoothly move into place' feature, combined with the 'new item' animation, was causing items added to the end of the dock to momentarily appear outside the same.

* Re-arranging tasklist items in the dock via drag & drop was broken.

* Fixed some problems with the 'remove item from dock' animation if the mouse pointer was at the end or begining of the dock and the dock was magnifying.

* Customizing the icon of a task item via drag & drop of an ICO or PNG image could apply the new icon to the wrong item under certain circumstances.

* Fixed problem where the mouseover effect would 'stick' to an icon and keep playing even though the mouse pointer was no longer over the dock.

* Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of system tray and task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion list. Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.


--------------------------

NextSTART Version 16.2 build 749


New Features:


* Updated the French language file.

* Updated Italian language file (incomplete).

* Updated Spanish language file (incomplete).

* Updated Indonesian language file.

* Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file (incomplete).

* The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.

* The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'. This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.

* Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the NextSTART taskbar.

* Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).

* Added option to lock desktop hotspot buttons so they cannot be dragged by accident.

* Added option to automatically snap desktop hotspot buttons into alignment when dragging them.

* Pressing SHIFT when dragging a desktop hotspot button now causes all hotspot buttons within snapping range of each other to move as a group.

* Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.

* Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default. The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.

* You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.

* Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.

* Added new 'CD Control' internal command. Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.

* NextSTART can now capture the new WorkShelf Battery Monitor module into the taskbar.


Fixes:


* The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Español' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.

* With the group tasks menu set to show on mouseover, sometimes the menu could open and close in quick succession before stabilizing.

* Tweaked the timings for the group tasks menu to popup on mouseover.

* The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.

* Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.

* The Winstep Update Manager was installing Nexus Ultimate Language Packs for Winstep Xtreme users.

* 'Power Off Monitor' and 'Start Screen Saver' internal commands were not working.

* Hotspot descriptive information in the Hotspots tab of NextSTART Preferences was not being updated when editing the last hotspot/creating a new hotspot.

* Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x

+++

* Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).

* Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead. This allows the user to specifically run shortcuts.

* The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.

* Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of system tray and task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion list. Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 1:20 am 
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Please don't forget that feedback is important (and nice!) too, betas are not just about reporting bugs.

Speak your mind regarding the changes in the organization of the UI, if you think they're an improvement or not, if the new Effects Panel is a step forward, etc... :D

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 4:06 am 
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winstep wrote:
PLEASE, YOU *MUST* TEST AND REPORT BACK on the new CD Control internal command.


So far so good there have been no hiccups with the CD Control and I have not encountered any problems with overall functionality. I need to look more closely at the listing of changes and fixes in this BETA and try and evaluate all of the features and fixes. :D


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 6:08 am 
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winstep wrote:
PLEASE, YOU *MUST* TEST AND REPORT BACK on the new CD Control internal command.

Clicking on it should toggle the CD drive's door from open to closed and vice-versa. It is this toggling that needs to be tested with various drives: since the system provides no way to know if the drive's door is currently open or closed, the IC command first tries to close the door - the API function that does this does not return an error if the door is already closed (which doesn't help) but it does *usually* return *much faster* than normal if so. It is this timing difference that is used to determine if the door was already closed or not, in which case a command to open the door is then issued.

This timing difference needs to be tested with various CD drive models.

If you have more than one CD-ROM drive on your system, you can select which drive the command applies to by right clicking on the IC's shortcut and selecting 'Item Properties'.

Jorge, on my system, it opens and closes the tray, but it also pops up an error, "Sorry, unable to eject media on drive D::".

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:05 am 
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Thank you both for the feedback. :)

vectornut wrote:
Jorge, on my system, it opens and closes the tray, but it also pops up an error, "Sorry, unable to eject media on drive D::".


Paul, stupid question I know, but are you sure you're not clicking twice in a row in the CD-Control IC by accident?

Also, when you insert media into the CD Drive, does the CD Control IC accurately report what type of disk/media is inside?

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
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FYI: CD Control works fine on my system.


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:08 pm 
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Thanks Jerry. :)

What do you think of the new Effects Panel?

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 2:15 am 
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winstep wrote:
Paul, stupid question I know, but are you sure you're not clicking twice in a row in the CD-Control IC by accident?


I am single clicking. Once. :D

winstep wrote:
Also, when you insert media into the CD Drive, does the CD Control IC accurately report what type of disk/media is inside?


Yes. I tried with a CD, a DVD, and a CDR. It correctly identified all 3.

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 12:26 pm 
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winstep wrote:
What do you think of the new Effects Panel?


I'm not personally into a lot of effects. I prefer a clean, simple interface. However, I still think you should have the effects for the users who like them and the new Effects Panel does a very good job of depicting the available effects and showing the user exactly how each one would appear if selected.


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 3:18 pm 
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The Effects Panel is great. It makes it so much easier to choose.


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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
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Thanks for the feedback. :)

I actually got down to the gritty details when making it. Notice how the background is your current wallpaper, although obscured by a 'grid texture'.

When the effects are playing by themselves, what you are seeing is a repetition of the Attention mode for that effect. Mouse over one of the icons and you get the Mouse-over mode. Click the icon and you get the Launch mode.

Also, right clicking one of the icons opens up the Effect Settings panel for that effect.

You can also replace the icon used to show off the effects by one of your choice - and when you do, you get to see the 'fade out the old while fading in the new' transition that inspired me to also use it in docks and the Shelf when an icon is replaced (try dropping a PNG file into an existing shortcut in the dock to change its image now).

For instance, when you first go to the Themes tab in the Shelf, the theme icons are replaced, one by one, with thumbnails of the themes themselves so you can identify them better (same thing happens with documents/images that display a thumbnail, btw).

Before, this transition was instantaneous - now the old icon fades out while the new thumbnail fades in. This makes the transition much smoother - does nothing for usability, of course, but it's a nice little touch and the devil is in the little touches. :wink:

Getting back to the Effects Panel: for now the icons in there are 64x64 pixels. Not sure if this makes the panel a bit bigger than it should?

Not that it matters much: if/when I add new effects in the future the size of those icons must be reduced so the new effects fit in, perhaps to 48x48.

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 8:09 pm 
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vectornut wrote:
Jorge, on my system, it opens and closes the tray, but it also pops up an error, "Sorry, unable to eject media on drive D::".


Figured out what the problem was and fixed it. Thanks, Paul! :)

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 3:29 am 
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winstep wrote:
vectornut wrote:
Jorge, on my system, it opens and closes the tray, but it also pops up an error, "Sorry, unable to eject media on drive D::".


Figured out what the problem was and fixed it. Thanks, Paul! :)

I'm impressed! You fixed a problem that wasn't even happening on your machine, just by me telling you it existed. :-D

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 Post subject: Re: Winstep Xtreme/Nexus Ultimate v16.2 *public betas* relea
PostPosted: Wed Feb 03, 2016 6:50 am 
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So many new goodies to try out! I've tried a few things out (alarm, left-click feature for the Control Icon on the dock, and effects features) and like what I see so far! :D

There are a couple of things I need clarification on. How do I use the CD feature? I assume it isn't through Computer since that would be using Windows to eject etc.

Because I was perusing through stuff to check out all of the new goodies, I decided to use the (third-party, not Windows) shortcut in WorkShelf to re-enable my firewall. I don't why, but for some reason I hadn't used it in the past so I don't know if it was like this all along. I always used it via Programs since it disappears from the system tray when I turn it off. I rarely turn off my firewall.

The problem is, the shortcut to my firewall doesn't work via WorkShelf. I get an error message that displays the path, and also reads: The specified path does not exist. Check the path and try again. What's also strange is that if I drag that same shortcut from WorkShelf to my dock, it works! :? My anti-virus shortcut works fine in WorkShelf.


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