The reason I directed you to that Product Comparison page is because it explains the difference between the different Winstep products (and the components of each) in simple terms and with pictures to help you visualize the differences.
That page alone should answer the initial half of your first post.
You could say that Nexus free, Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme are 'different levels' of the same product, and, in a way, that is exactly what they are.
It also explains that as you go from the free version of Nexus, to Nexus Ultimate to Winstep Xtreme, the learning curve gets steeper: because each of the different products has much more stuff than the previous, naturally there is also much more to learn if you want to go further than 'skin deep'.
I understand it can be a bit frustrating at times, especially now that we no longer have a detailed User Guide like we had some years ago, but, on the other hand, discovering all the functionality Winstep Xtreme has to offer can also be a lot of fun! Your persistence gets rewarded by discovering bits and pieces of functionality you might not even know was there in the first place.
Winstep products are fully customizable and also extremely powerful, and that means hundreds of different options. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so a setting that works for you might not work for another - Winstep applications cater to both by allowing you to tweak all these settings until you get something that works *for you*. It's all about personalization.
Flexibility and ease of use, however, are normally enemies of each other: make a product extremely simple to use and you've also dumbed it down. Too many options and users get lost.
So, there is a balance, and Winstep products try to achieve that balance via the default settings and context menus. If you forget that the Preferences panel exists, Winstep applications are actually very easy to use: drag & drop, right click context menus, that is all you need to use.
It's only when you go to Preferences and see all those different options that things start to get complicated - on the other hand, the options are there for when you want to go beyond the basics, you just have to find them and understand what they do and how they work. And here is where the learning curve starts to get steeper.
Docjon wrote:
I like the taskbar changes, but it seems like when I enable it, the screen flickers sometimes and something resets.
Yes. The Winstep NextSTART taskbar, just like the Windows taskbar, reserves a part of the screen area for itself, so that maximized windows do not cover it. Because the size (height) of the Windows taskbar is different than the size of the Winstep taskbar, that difference in size of the reserved areas makes the windows on your screen re-position themselves not to overlap the taskbar. That is the 'flicker' you see.
If you then disable the NextSTART taskbar, the same thing will happen as the Windows taskbar becomes visible again and the available screen space changes one more time.
Docjon wrote:
The program can't seem to import 7zip or RAR files, just ZIP.
First of all, think about this: you are able to use dock themes that were actually made for OTHER docks (RocketDock, YzDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, etc), not just native Winstep themes. Isn't that amazing by itself?
Other docks don't do that, they support their own native skinning format and that's it - want to use a dock theme made for RK Launcher in RocketDock? You'll have to modify the INI files yourself!
Now, want to know why these dock themes come in all these different compression formats (.ZIP, RAR, etc...)? Because NONE of the other docks support ANY compression formats! Dock theme authors were thus free to use whatever compression program/format they pleased - the end user would have to MANUALLY un-archive those themes and move them into their own folders. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
So, what you think of as a drawback, is actually a feature: unlike ALL the other docks, which support ZERO compression formats, the Winstep dock actually supports the most popular (and official since it is also natively supported by Windows) compression format available: zip files.
Docjon wrote:
It's also a bit annoying that I can't multi-select items to import, when I DL'ed a dozen or more cool new themes. I have to import one at a time.
With the other docks you would have to do the same. But here is a little 'secret' (it was actually mentioned in the old User Guide, but, as I said, we no longer have an up-to-date User Guide):
Place *all* the zip files at once inside the
C:\Users\Public\Documents\WinStep\AutoInstall\
folder and then click the Import button in the Themes tab of Preferences. The Import function will now try to install all those themes at once.
Docjon wrote:
I un-archived them and moved them, in their own folder, to the correct folder, opened from the folder link in the interface, but it doesn't recognize them.
Guess you need to read
THIS too. It's a 'How to install Themes' tutorial linked to in the Themes and Support page on the Winstep web site. The information is there, but you do have to look for it.
Docjon wrote:
I tried to import the .zip'ed themes, but no matter the folder I put them in, it tells me, "The action can't be completed because the folder or a file in it is open in another program" even if I JUST created the folder and moved the themes into it. Nothing should reasonably be using it.
Can you please reproduce the situation again, but this time describing in detail here *every* little step you took? Devil is in the details, as always.
Docjon wrote:
I find myself missing a master menu -"click here for Taskbar and start menu, here for dock and bookshelf", etc. Maybe there is one and I haven't found it.
First you have to keep in mind that NextSTART and WorkShelf (the two main components of Winstep Xtreme) are *separate* applications even though they are part of the same suite (much like Excel and Word are separate applications in Microsoft Office) so they have individual Preference screens.
For the Shelf, if you open WorkShelf Preferences, the 'Docks & Shelves' tab provides a centralized place from where you can manage the Shelf and all your docks, as well as access the Options screens of each.