Im on trial version now of winstep extreme really liking it and might end up buying but there is one thing bothering me whenever i alt tab from lets say firefox or games then i open the shelf or dock and click on desktop the shelf and dock dissapears and reappears quickly and the windows taskbar dissapears. THis only happens if i alt-tab If i minimize the screen it doesnt flicker and taskbar doesnt dissapear. Would really set in stone my purchase if there is a way around this because some programs I use can't be minimized and I need to use alt-tab frequently to change from one screen to another.

thanks,

What version of Windows are you using and what version of Winstep Xtreme?

Anyway, go to the Windows Control Panel, open the Ease of Access Center, click on Make the mouse easier to use.

Is 'Activate a window by hovering it with the mouse' set? If so, try clearing it and see if that fixes the problem.

Im using windows 7 64bit and winstep xtreme ver. 11.10 and the active on mouseover is not set. It only happens when I alt tab from a some program to the desktop but if I minimize it doesn't do the weird appear dissapear in a blink also the nexstart bar doesnt dissapear only when im using the windows taskbar. Guessing the screen that i tabbed out from is still on top eventhough its not visible thats why that happens. Maybe there is a way to set it up on winstep settings?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER-3Vnvo ... e=youtu.be

Here is the video see how the windows taskbar dissapear after I alt tab from browser and how it blinks when i open shelf and click on desktop,

Holy shit, he's right!!!
The "alt-tab to desktop" is the magic key here. Even though I never use alt-tab to the desktop... I can verify.
Alt-tab to the desktop, then bump edge to show hidden shelf/dock, then (without clicking anything on the shelf/dock) click the desktop.
The Windows taskbar is gone.
Alt-tabbing to some other application, and it's back.
One more detail: if there's any dock always visible on the desktop, by alt-tabbing to the desktop and bumping an edge to show a collapsed shelf/dock, the always visible dock disappears!
Weird, huh?

Ok, finally a reliable way to reproduce this!

Bad news though... Z-Order issues are notoriously difficult to solve. I've been looking at this for hours (again!) and it's a mess! The problem is what Windows does behind the scenes when you use Show Desktop, it's all a big hack! It minimizes some windows but does not notify them of this, it raises a Worker_W window to top which replaces the Desktop but is not the real desktop, provides no notification that Show Desktop is in effect, etc, etc...

The worse in all this mess is that it provides no mechanism to exclude a window from being hidden when the user selects 'Show Desktop' (unlike, for instance, AeroPeek, where you can simply set an attribute and problem solved!).

Because the whole thing is a mess to begin with, even when you work around all of the above to figure out when the desktop has been raised and to keep your windows visible, you then run into the glitches you've just described.

As I said, I just spent hours looking at this and unfortunately, after trying several different hacks, each more complex than the previous, I'm still nowhere near to solving this problem than I was.

I'll keep trying now that I know how to reproduce this unwanted behavior.

Hmmm... I think I may have fixed this.

Heh... that didn't take long, now did it?

It's all quite consistent with MS tactics, though... half-arsed solutions, messy hacks, bad design choices which wreak havoc and cause more damage than do any good. Typical...
I guess I should have expected something like that, considering that the alt-tab mechanism only addresses running processes, and the desktop is... heh... a special case of windows explorer which they tried to tie to internet explorer and then made a different module to replace ie which was banned and had to be completely removable.

Didn't take long?

To add to the *hours* I spent working on solving that single issue above, I then stumbled into another *single issue* that kept me busy since I made that post until now.

This one was related to capturing WorkShelf desktop modules into the NextSTART taskbar. The module would appear inside the NextSTART taskbar as it should, but then it suddenly would jump to the desktop again.

I combed the code and there was NOTHING that told the module to move again once inside the taskbar. Nothing. The code worked perfectly in the IDE too.

Eventually I had to resort to writing to the Windows event log to try to understand the sequence of events and what was going on. Even then everything was as it should, but the module window would still suddenly jump to another position when it was not supposed to.

I must have compiled the code 30 times until I finally figured out what was going on and fixed it. Not exaggerating here. 30 times or more! Hours and hours wasted on this single issue.

And you know what was causing it? Not me or my code.

When you use Windows appbars to reserve screen space, Windows will automatically move normal windows out of the reserved screen space, unless the windows has the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW style.

When I captured the module into the NextSTART taskbar, the size of the taskbar changed to accommodate the module, which would then trigger an appbar area resize. The problem is that Windows would, after doing all the appbar moving and shuffling, set *my* desktop module to WHERE it was *before* the shuffling started, even though I had moved it elsewhere in the mean time and set the WS_EX_TOOLWINDOW style.

No wonder I couldn't find what in my code was moving it back into the desktop... it wasn't my code it was Windows itself that did the moving *after* the fact! Aaaaaaaaargh!

And if you thought (and I did) that the ALT+TAB saga was over, well, it wasn't...

Today I was forced to spend a few more hours working on it again... turns out my previous solution would end up setting a random window on the desktop with an 'always on top' status after coming back from 'Show Desktop'. A random window. And not because of something I did on purpose or by mistake, but because of the mysterious way Windows handles z-order issues internally.

I hope you now understand why I go into panic mode anytime someone mentions a z-order problem in Winstep applications.

Thanks for the time you put in hopefully find a fix soon. It is really a nice program you have and would love to buy it.

Go to this post HERE and download the beta from there.

Please let me know ASAP if the issue has been fixed (crossing fingers).

Yup... looks like it's fixed, mate!

Seems like its working. thanks

Now you have no excuse not to buy it.

Just kidding, make sure it serves your purposes first... and enjoy the long list of new features in that v12.2 beta.