All, I'm having an issue using nexus dock with my bridge and Photoshop applications. I have a high dpi monitor so I have a manifest file setup with my bridge and photoshop exe files (separate .manifest files). When launching the apps from Nexus the manifest files are being ignored and the apps launch with a huge UI (or small one depending on how the app is set). The manifest files tell these two apps to not set themselves and use the windows scaling instead. When launching from windows quick launch or start menu they open as expected, even from a desktop shortcut. The link from Nexus ignores the manifest files no matter how I add it to nexus. (drag the exe to nexus, dragging shortcut from desktop or start menu.

Any ideas how I can get this to work?

What is the 'Start In' folder of those shortcuts set to?

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Bridge CC 2015

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5

Try leaving the 'Start In' box blank instead then.

Also, does the

C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Bridge CC 2015

folder exist as well?

External Manifest files can be a real PITA.

I'll give that a try this evening on blanking the Start in box. There is no copy of the same folder in the x86 program files, thought there are some Adobe files in there, these are not.

I hate having to use the manifest files but Adobe only offers two options for UI scaling, 100% and 200%. on a 4k monitor the interface is either HUGE or tiny. They need to offer some intermediate sizes and this whole mess wouldn't be an issue.

Also I noticed that in the Start In details on the Nexus Dock Entry Properties it does not have the "'s on the path which I doubt makes a difference but I also noticed it always seems to append a slash "\" at the end of whatever one puts in there.

Something else to try and see what happens: add a shortcut to a .PSD file to the dock and launch that instead. Photoshop should launch automatically with that document open - is the manifest still ignored in that case?

Good idea. I'll try that too. Thank you for the help here.

Tried these things.

Removed Start in field.. it repopulated on its own. Still ignores manifest file.

Tried a link to a psd file in Nexus dock. Ignored manifest file

Double clicking psd file from explorer works like it should and loads photoshop with correct UI sizing in manifest file

Did find a way it works.. sort of. Check "Run as administrator" in Dock item properties. This DOES work but of course one has to click UAC confirmation box also so it is a two step method of running each time.

Hope this helps.

Although I don't know what is causing this issue, I don't think this is a Winstep issue per se.

The Winstep application launches an executable with the ShellExecuteEx API call. It passes the proper arguments to this API and what happens from then on is entirely up to Windows (i.e.; it's Windows itself doing the actual launching of the application, the Winstep application only tells it *what* to launch).

Now, take the example of the .PST file. The Winstep application tells Windows to launch the .PST document itself, it does NOT tell Windows to launch Photoshop with that .PST file as an argument. It is up to Windows itself to find the executable associated with the .PST document extension and launch it - if there is none, it pops up an error (Windows, NOT the Winstep application).

So, as you can see, the failure is happening at the Windows level. Why? I don't know.

Why doesn't it happen when you launch the shortcut from Explorer? Again, anybody's guess, but keep in mind that Explorer is also written by MS and is a part of Windows - it is thus integrated with the system in a way that 3rd party applications are not.

The Winstep application does what it is supposed to do to launch an application, by the book.

Since running the shortcut elevated seems to work, I suspect some kind of permissions problem with the manifest itself. Perhaps because Photoshop already has its own internal manifest (no idea, just guessing).

Here I also added an external manifest to a VB application to make it display Windows common controls instead of the (old) Win9x style buttons, checkboxes, etc... It just works, even if I launch that VB application from a Winstep application - so the issue, whatever it is, is not with the Winstep applications themselves, but something else external to them.

Well after some more tinkering and research I discovered that there is an inherent problem with running the manifest files anyway. In Photoshop the brushes in the image editor do not size correctly. I knew something had been wrong recently and now this confirms it. I'm going to dump the manifest files anyway now. I know this wasn't a problem with WinStep per se, but I appreciate you sticking with me on this and it helped me work out another issue . Love the product and always have. I actually bought a winstep license over a decade ago but haven't used it since windows 7.0
Keep up the great work!

Thanks!