For 'a few seconds' is definitely NOT normal. It can be that retrieving one icon takes so long, for some particular reason, that the others end up suffering (i.e.; are rendered with the generic icon) because of it.

If it's always the same 3 icons getting properly rendered and the remaining showing the generic icon, then try moving the third dock item (i.e.; the item with the last icon properly rendered) to another place further down the dock. If the ball stops with that particular icon again, you've found your culprit, and all you need to do is figure out why THAT particular item takes such a long time to render/fetch.



SSDs always speed things up. Again, however, 'a few seconds' is not normal, be it an SSD or an HD.

As for making the generic icon less blurry, no. That is actually the Windows default icon - and it's just a temporary place-holder anyway.

Using WS to put a clock on the desktop. Analog clock option works perfectly. Most of my skins have skinned the analog clock.

I cannot get the digital clock to show up at all. No combination of settings, not changing the image, nothing. Won't show up. The analog clock remains on the desktop.

(I would never use the digital clock, but others might.)

Why would Nexus expand every time you click on a Shelf tab?!



What icon cache? Windows?

you wrote: "All these already rendered icons are then cached in memory when you switch to a new tab. Because they are cached in memory, they no longer need to be fetched from disk the next time you switch back to that tab, and will now appear nearly instantly." That cache.

Nexus only expanded when this bad stuff was happening. It doesn't expand when I click on a tab.

Not the first to complain about this, but this is due to a lack of understanding on what desktop modules actually are: desktop modules are free form skins made by a skinner. So, what you see is what you get: if the skinner made the desktop module in analog format, there simply is no digital skin alternative in that theme.

But the real truth is actually sadder than this: I never actually added skinning options for the skinner to be able to make a *digital* desktop clock module, only analog.

The only way you can make the desktop clock module show up as digital is by using a theme that actually does not have a skin for the clock module. In that case, WorkShelf will use the normal icon, which will display in the currently selected module style, analog or digital.

'That cache' is held in memory, so CCleanner can't get to it.



Yeah, but why?

Nexus only expanded when this bad stuff was happening.


Yeah, but why?

Ah, that I cannot answer.
I can say that a couple minutes ago, when I was playing with the clock module, I clicked "apply" and all that "bad stuff" happened. Nexus expanded and turned black. WS expanded then everything turned black. The normal contracted WS was visible. The whole thing was frozen though, I couldn't get anything to respond.
I'm screwing around with the WS settings trying to make it happen again to get a screen shot.

Bah, I can't get the "bad stuff" to trigger. Next time it happens I will try and get a screenshot.

No need for a screenshot in this case, thanks, I know what something like that looks like.

To me it sounds like something gets 'stuck', and, until it times out or the operation succeeds, the application remains unresponsive.

It could be anything. A frozen third party application could potentially cause this, for instance, although safeguards have been implemented to prevent such a thing, or at least minimize its effects.

It's a problem that affects applications that have to work with or get info from third party applications.

For instance, to get the small 16x16 icon of a window belonging to a running application, you send a WM_GETICON message via SendMessage to that window. The window responds with an handle to its icon.

The problem is if that 3rd party application is itself frozen. The SendMessage function never returns and your application ends up getting frozen too because of the other (which is why I use SendMessageTimeout instead, but read above about timeouts).

Likewise, when you change the wallpaper, you are supposed to use SendMessage with a HWND_BROADCAST parameter to let all other top level windows know about this change. Problem is, if *one* of those windows belongs to a frozen third party application, again SendMessage never returns and you freeze too.

Another case where I also use SendMessageTimeout, but if you run into a frozen third party application the timeout still has to elapse before the Winstep application becomes responsive again.

Hmmm... Besides windowblinds, I don't really use any actively running third party apps, but who knows what kind of things MS has running at any time.

Getting back to this: the clock module is kind of special in this respect, so in retrospect I should have required skinners to make two different desktop clock module skins for each theme from the very beginning, one analog and another digital.

But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20 vision. Too late now.

I am running 10, but I don't even know what a UWP app is.

Universal Windows Platform - just a fancy term for the "Metro" / "Universal" apps that are built into Windows 10 (Mail, Calendar, People, Photos, Groove Music, Maps, etc.) and also available via the Windows Store (Facebook, Twitter, games, etc.) These are the same apps that are also on Windows Phone.

UWP = Universal Windows Platform, i.e.; Metro/Universal style apps. Those fuggly apps with really ugly black & white icons.

When I choose digital clock and then choose 'change icon' there is an icon for me to choose, some kind of default icon. I've chosen that icon and hit apply, but still nothing. Just FYI.