I updated from 24.4 to 26.6 and had to go back. I found it slowed down my task dock and created an individual icon for each work that was opened in Photoshop. When I closed a program it took an extended period of time for the responding task icon to close in the dock.

This may not be a problem for others, but it drove me crazy

Hi! Long time no speak!

At first I was extremely bewildered by your description since there has been no change to the way Winstep applications group tasks, even from v24.4 to v26.6.

But then I remembered Adobe migrated Photoshop to some kind of web based platform (I only have CS6 here, so I would know nothing about how they implemented that) and that v26.6 also added support for PWAs (Progressive Web Applications).

PWA support separates web applications from the parent browser, so the icons do not appear grouped with normal browser windows. This is not a bug, it is actually a feature that had already been requested by some.

I imagine the new PWA support might have something to do with what you are seeing, but being completely unfamiliar with how Adobe does things these days and not being willing to pay hundreds of bucks just to find out, I can't be 100% sure if that is the cause or if it is something else.

Since PWA support is brand new, it still has some rough edges that I am currently taking care of (next release is going to be primarily a maintenance release).

Would you be willing to install v26.6 again so you can help me figure out what is going on in there, so I can fix it for the next release - please? Pretty please?

Oh, and good news - thanks to your feedback I tracked down and fixed a couple of issues in the running‑task management, including one that likely caused the long delay before a closed program’s task icon disappeared from the dock.

However, I’ll need you to reinstall v26.6 before I release a new beta, so we can verify whether the issues you reported have been resolved or not.

Dawn, new beta of v26.7 which potentially fixes your issues has been release here:

viewtopic.php?p=51154#p51154

Please keep in mind you must install v26.6 prior to installing the beta of v26.7.

Please let me know ASAP how it turned out.

Okay Jorge, I will reinstall 26.6.

I'll let you know when it is in.

Thanks Dawn!

Looking forward to knowing if the beta fixes the issue or not... if it does not, please don't immediately go back to v24.4 so I may have a chance to troubleshoot the problem.

Okay, here goes.
opening apps take 6 seconds for the task icon to show and closing takes another 6 seconds to close. The first time I installed 26.6 I lost my systray dock. Now that i have updated it again, it has come back.

Quick question. I don't use grouping the task icons because I can't stand the number overlay. Is there anyway to stop this?

1. Is this after installing the beta of v26.7?!

2. Does this happen with ALL applications (i..e Win32 applications as well as UWP applications) or only certain applications take a long time to appear on the tasklist ?

3. Do you experience the same 6 second delay in NextSTART as well as WorkShelf (and vice-versa) ?

4. Does it make any difference if you temporarily group the tasks?

5. What other customization software are you running?

6. Your OS is Windows 11, right?



Not currently since there is no other way to visually let the user know that that particular icon represents more than one running instance (and the number overlay actually gives you useful information). What would you suggest?

1. I haven't installed 2.67 yet.
2. Yes it happens with all apps
3. Yes with Nextstart
4. It still does it with tasks grouped
5. Windows 11

re suggestions with numbers. Could there be a toggle to turn it off/on

Okay your turn

Thanks.

Need you to install the v26.7 beta from here (download links and instructions on that post) and then report back please:

viewtopic.php?p=51154#p51154

Also, what other customization software are you running? WindowBlinds, Start11, anything else that is not vanilla?

Jorge
I am running Windowblinds and Rainmeter only.

Ok, thanks, I will also need to know if the beta of v27.6 fixes anything, please...

I have been looking into what could be causing the six-second delay between opening an application and its icon appearing on the Winstep tasklist. The only plausible explanation I can currently think of is that something on your computer is blocking or interfering with Windows shell notifications.

Windows can have hundreds, or even thousands, of windows open at any given time. Most are invisible, and many ordinary interface controls - such as buttons, check boxes and text fields - are technically windows too.

Only a very small subset of these windows are eligible to appear on the taskbar or a Winstep tasklist. Unfortunately, the only reliable way to determine which ones qualify is to enumerate the windows and check their properties individually.

This can be handled in one of two ways:

The first is polling, where the application enumerates all windows every second or so to detect any changes.

The second is through push notifications from the Windows shell. In this case, the Winstep application waits for Windows to report that a new window has been created, an existing window has closed, or some other relevant event has occurred. Only then does it enumerate the windows and filter out those that are not eligible to appear on the tasklist.

With push notifications, the application does not have to waste time and CPU cycles repeatedly checking thousands of windows for changes every second. Naturally, Winstep applications use this more efficient method.

Version 24.4 still performed a fallback poll approximately every five seconds, regardless of whether any shell notifications had been received. This was necessary because UWP applications can be cloaked and uncloaked - essentially made invisible or visible - using a mechanism different from the one used by traditional Win32 applications, and I was not yet aware of the relevant shell events at the time.

Once I discovered that Windows also provides notifications for UWP windows being cloaked or uncloaked, I was able to replace that periodic fallback poll with event-driven notifications as well.

Shell notifications are normally delivered immediately, and the Winstep tasklist should then be refreshed no more than one second later. This is what leads me to suspect that something on your system - possibly a third-party application or security software - is preventing those notifications from reaching the Winstep application.

Another possibility would be that the shell hook itself is failing to register. However, Winstep has a fallback for that situation which polls the tasklist approximately once per second. Since that does not appear to be happening either, it suggests that the shell hook is being established successfully, but the notifications themselves are somehow not being delivered.

There was also a bug introduced in version 25.6, which I have fixed in the latest beta, that prevented cloak and uncloak events from being processed correctly. However, that bug, combined with shell notifications not being delivered, would be more likely to prevent the tasklist in v26.6 from updating altogether rather than merely delay it by six seconds.

That is what puzzles me most: a six-second delay would make considerably more sense with your previous version 24.4, which still had the five-second fallback poll, than with version 26.6.

As for your intense dislike for the numeric badges, I was thinking in adding an optional alternative method for "stacked" windows, something a bit like what is described in the image below... would you prefer something like that?

I did one better, as you might already realized from my post above. Added a grouped icon indicator setting, shared with NextSTART:



Stacked icons will show one rear copy when the icon represents two grouped windows,, and two rear copies when it represents more than two:

Excellent!!

Thanks, Dawn, glad you like it, but more important to me right now is knowing if the beta of v26.7 fixed the issues with the running tasks on your system.

If not then we can get to troubleshoot on what might be happening there, but first I need you to install the beta on top of the v26.6 version I hope you are still running... that was the hole point of asking you to install v26.6.

Beta can be downloaded from the links in this post:

viewtopic.php?p=51154#p51154