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Nexus Dock v16.12 Released!
December 8, 2016
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The Winstep Nexus dock is a FREE dock for Windows. Every feature you’d expect from a dock, including widgets, mouse-over effects, skins, drag-and-drop, and many others not available in most other docks, such as live icon reflections, in-dock system tray, blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, with thousands of different backgrounds freely available online, Nexus is fully compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.
Nexus runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8.x and 10.
v16.12 features a new calendar module (Nexus Ultimate only), high quality voice packs, the ability to speak the time properly in German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French, more alarm options (including a new 'Every Year' schedule to remind you of birthdays and anniversaries) plus many other performance, stability and User Interface enhancements.
Important note to users of the free version of the Winstep Nexus Dock:
Historically every single feature added to Nexus Ultimate over the years was also made available to users of the free version, making Nexus one of the best docks - if not the best - among all the other free and commercial options. To this day Nexus is still the only dock fully compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 10 UWP (Universal) apps.
The problem with that approach was that the incentive to upgrade never changed, with many users thinking that the free version was either 'good enough' or that the differences did not justify the upgrade price despite having enjoyed the benefits of Nexus continuous development for years.
This finally forced us to focus on increasing the advantages of upgrading from the free version.
Once again, this does not mean development on the free version has stopped - not at all, as is easy to see from the change log below - but most major new features are now only made available to users of Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme. Such is the case of the new calendar and battery modules, clock alarms, extra mouseover effects, etc...
As a business, Winstep needs the support of paying customers to remain viable and justify the continued development of its industry leading products.
The final consequences of not supporting the things you like and use every day (either by not contributing or by engaging in software piracy) are clearly visible to everyone: they eventually disappear. The other free docks have not been updated in years, but Nexus remains a success thanks to the support of its users.
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Nexus Ultimate 24.4
The Advanced Docking System for Windows
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Buy Now
$29.95
Thank you for your preference and for your help in making Nexus one of the best docks for Windows!
What's New? Highlighted Features:
- New high-quality English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish Voice Packs.
Voice packs are used by the clock module to announce the time, by the Email Checker module to announce the arrival of new messages, and by the Battery Monitor module to announce power events.
The previous English default voice pack had a very low sampling rate because it was originally made when Internet speeds where still measured in Kbits/second - back then the size of installation files mattered very much, and sound files used a big chunk of that. There was never much thought given to this until someone complained about their quality.
We listen to our users - and then go a step further!
The Winstep applications already support different languages for the User Interface (something called localization) but while the sound files in the Voice Packs could also be localized, doing this would not be enough because different languages also have different ways of saying the time (and counting numbers too). Another issue was that the Email Checker relied on existing clock voices to announce the number of incoming messages, and thus could only count up to 59.
These problems were solved using two separate approaches: first by analyzing how the time is spoken in German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French so individual algorithms would be used to say the time and count numbers in a manner specific to each of those languages. Voice packs for each language were then created using high-quality text-to-speech engines, each pack containing all the words required for saying the time and counting numbers up to 1 million (if you have more than 1 million incoming messages you have far greater problems than we can solve).
A special code in the configuration file of each new voice pack tells the Winstep application which language algorithm to use for speaking the time and counting incoming messages.
If your language is not one of the specified above, please contact us! We would be happy to work with you to add new voice packs in even more languages.
- Winstep Update Manager improvements.
Even though file size is no longer as important as it once was, each Voice Pack is still roughly about 300 Kb in size. The chances of someone requiring a voice pack in a language other than his own are also very slim indeed. Installing all the available international voice packs by default would thus be a waste of bandwidth and of space on the user's hard drive.
This is where the Winstep Update Manager comes in: only the English voice pack is included by default in new installations (as before) but now the Winstep Update Manager will also check if a voice pack is available in the user's language right after installation (i.e.; the language selected for the User Interface) - and will offer to download and install it if so. Future updates to voice packs can now be distributed via the Winstep Update Manager as well.
The new version of the Update Manager also tries to mitigate an issue experienced by a few users in which the installation of an update would abort with a 'can only be installed on top of a full version' error message. From what could be determined, the cause is the inappropriate removal of Winstep setup-related keys from the Windows Registry by the user's own Registry Cleanner software. The issue is resolved by automatically downloading the full version instead of the smaller update pack whenever this situation is detected - something which also re-creates the missing keys in the Windows Registry.
- When changing the currently selected language in Preferences, if a voice pack in the selected language exists, it will be automatically selected as well.
- New Calendar module (Nexus Ultimate only).
Like all other modules, the new calendar is available in two different styles: Classic and Flip-calendar.
Besides many other customization options allowing the use of different icon backgrounds and colors for both styles, users can also choose what happens when clicking on it: the module can either display the Windows calendar (the calendar you get when you click on the clock in the Windows taskbar) or launch a user-specified application (normally a 3rd party calendar application).
Please note that the free version of Nexus does not include neither the new calendar module nor the battery monitor module. These (and all other upcoming new modules) are reserved for Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme.
- New Modules tab in Preferences.
Winstep Xtreme has a dedicated Modules tab in Preferences, where the user can configure the various settings related to iconic and desktop modules.
Nexus did not have a dedicated Modules tab. Instead module configuration was accessible from the Contents tab in Preferences (under Nexus Ultimate this same tab can be found in the Dock Properties panel of each dock) where users could choose if the Nexus control icon, running applications and system tray icons should be displayed on the dock.
Module configuration ended up getting crammed in there basically to make use of available space, and also because basic module settings under Nexus and Nexus Ultimate use so little screen real estate that a dedicated tab would be mostly blank.
Doing things this way, however, turned out to be a mistake: it confuses users. Because the module settings were in the Contents tab (where you can turn on and off various things that appear on the dock) users would logically assume they could add and remove modules directly from there too.
But they can't, those settings are for module configuration only. To add and remove modules from the dock, users need to use the right-click context menus.
To add to the confusion, Nexus Ultimate did not have a Modules tab in the main Preferences window either: module settings could only be accessed via the Dock Properties dialogs.
The new Modules tab in the main Preferences window of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate puts an end to this. It also clearly ilustrates how to add modules (and internal commands) to the dock.
- New Alarm Manager options.
The Alarm Manager got some visual and functional enhancements: a digital clock instead of the previous analog clock in the alarm list makes it easier to know at a glance when an alarm will run next, and new scheduling options have also been added.
Alarms can now be scheduled to run every year on a fixed day or on a specific weekday (e.g.; every last Sunday of October), and daily alarms can be made to run every (x) hours at a specific time (on the hour, quarter past, etc...)
Clock Alarms have also been integrated with the new Calendar module: hovering the mouse pointer over the calendar will pop up a tooltip describing any clock alarm events for that day.
Please note that the free version of Nexus supports a single alarm, while Nexus Ultimate supports an unlimited number of alarms.
- Email Checker module now displays number of unread messages on the icon itself.
When there are unread messages on the server, the number of messages is now overlapped to the Email Checker icon. Those who don't like this feature can always turn it off in the Email Checker Settings dialog.
With the new Voice Packs, the Email Checker is now also able to report more than 59 pending messages.
- Changed the 'Bounce' effect to be more similar to the Mac OSX original and gave it user-adjustable duration and magnitude settings like the other effects.
- Fixed issue where the MSI Installer could pop up when resolving special shortcuts.
- Fixed several z-order issues.
- Improved response to and correct detection of WIN+D (Show Desktop).
- Minimized windows no longer loose their 'snap to edge' status when restored from a Winstep application.
- Added an 'Easy' mode to the Performance settings dialog so the 'basic' slider values now perform a linear escalation as originally intended. The user can still 'pick and choose' using the Advanced dialog.
- Many other User Interface, performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...
Nexus v16.12 complete change log:
- Replaced the Female and Male Clock and Email Checker Voices with new higher quality versions.
- Added new 'Activate if hidden when an application in the dock requests attention' setting to the Activation Settings dialog of the dock's Behavior tab. Enabled by default, this setting controls whether the dock should pop up if hidden when an application with an icon in the dock starts flashing to get your attention.
- The Email Checker module is now able to use speech to report more than 59 new messages (up to 1 million).
- The Email Checker module now displays the number of new messages in the icon itself by default. This can be prevented by disabling the 'Show number of messages in the icon' setting in the Email Checker Settings dialog.
- The Email Checker now checks for new mail immediately after changing settings in the Email Checker Settings dialog, unless automatic checking has been disabled.
- Apparently some Registry Cleanners would sometimes delete Winstep uninstall information from the Windows Registry, which resulted in the user being unable to uninstall the software normally and in him being unable to update normally (trying to install an update via the Winstep Update Manager would result in an error message being displayed instead). Before downloading an upgrade the Winstep Update Manager now checks the Windows Registry for the existence of this critical uninstall section and, if it has been deleted, downloads and installs the full version instead of the smaller upgrade pack. Current settings, etc, are all preserved regardless.
- Module previews in the Module settings dialogs of Preferences now instantly reflect the proper background icons specified by the user via the 'Change Icon' dialog. Previously the Module Settings dialogs were not reflecting changes made to the background icons of modules until those changes were made effective either by pressing the Apply or Ok button in Preferences.
- Improved what happens when the user makes changes to a module in Preferences and then opens the Settings dialog for that module via the right click context menu while Preferences is still open.
- The automatic scaling of the Net Meter module has been changed to progress from 10 Kbit to 100 Kbit, 1 Mbit, 10 Mbits, 100 Mbits, 1 Gbit, 10 Gbits, etc...
- Optimized the performance of updating the meter modules (CPU, Net, RAM) in gauge style when smooth meters is enabled (which is by default).
- Extensive re-organization and fine-tuning of all module related code, both to improve performance as well as to make it even easier to add new modules in the future.
- Made some cosmetic changes to the banner of the Alarm Manager dialog.
- Made some cosmetic changes to the Alarm Reminder in LCD Mode to better keep with the LCD theme: removed the degrees character from the temperature, added automatic replacement of foreign characters with western equivalent for the days of the week.
- Added 'Yearly' option to the clock Alarms - ideal to be reminded of birthdays and anniversaries.
- Yahoo changed the conditions of access to their Weather API, which caused the Yahoo backup weather feed to stop working. Restored this feed by using an alternate URL.
- The user can now define the units used to scale graphs manually in the Net Meter modules as either Bytes, KB, MB, Kbits or Mbits.
- If the Weather Module Settings dialog is open and a weather check is performed in the mean time, the information in the dialog is now updated too.
- METAR Weather information is now retrieved directly from a raw data NOAA server.
- Added 'From Now, On the Hour, Quarter Past, Half Past, Quarter Till' options to the 'Every x hours' daily clock alarm schedule.
- Response to the user pressing WIN+D is now almost instantaneous (before, the dock might momentarily flicker in and out of view).
- 'Restore Wallpaper' thumbnails now transition from wallpaper to wallpaper, when the Windows wallpaper slide-show is active, without first reverting to the general icon.
- WIN+D (Show Desktop) detection is now much more reliable. Microsoft deliberately did not provide a method to know when WIN+D just became active. Knowing when this happens is essential to prevent docks, etc, from hiding together with all other windows. The previous work-around method to detect WIN+D could sometimes falsely assume WIN+D was active if the user clicked on the desktop and no other windows were visible at the time. The changes applied to deal with (the falsely detected) WIN+D would then make docks set to always on top or always on bottom temporarily lose their z-order status.
- Under Windows 7 and later, if Desktop Composition is enabled the iconic window thumbnail extractor will use the DWM instead of PrintWindow to get a still thumbnail. This achieves success in most cases where PrintWindow would fail.
- The 'Busy' animation is now more responsive when starting up, restoring and backing up settings.
- The Weather and Email modules now refresh automatically immediately after restoring old settings.
- The 'Get Weather' button in the weather Module Settings dialog now bypasses the current weather information cache and stores a diagnostics 'Weather.log' file in the Winstep user data folder.
- The clock module is now able to announce the time using the proper format for the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German.
- The email module is now able to count incoming messages using the proper format for the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German.
- Added new English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German voice packs with high quality voices and all the words required to properly announce the time and count messages in these languages.
- The Winstep Update Manager is now able to look for and update voice packs as well. By default the application only comes with English male and female voices, but if other voices packs are available in the user's own language, the Winstep Update Manager will notify the user and download them right after installation.
- When changing the currently selected language in Preferences, if a voice pack in the selected language exists, it will be automatically selected as well.
- Added a 'Open Folder' button in the Sounds tab of Preferences to show the folder containing the files for the currently selected Voice theme/pack.
- Dock icon labels now bounce up and down with the icon for effects such as jump, bounce, etc...
- Changed the Bounce effect so it's a bit more similar to the original Mac OSX bounce effect. Like the other effects, it now also has settings for fine-tuning magnitude and duration.
- Added a 'Magnify Settings' button to the Effects tab in Preferences, which allows changing settings for this effect directly when combined with other effects.
- Improved icon reflection rendering performance for themes such as KTEK-4D1 where icon reflections are 'cropped' to the background tile.
- Modified the Performance Settings dialog so the 'basic' slider values now perform a linear escalation as originally intended. The user can still 'pick and choose' in the Advanced dialog.
- None of the settings in the Alarm Settings dialog (Initial Volume, Final Volume, LCD Style color, etc...) were being saved between sessions.
- Clicking the Default button in the METAR Server Settings dialog of the Weather module was restoring the previous, no longer working, NOAA weather link and search string.
- Because of the new aviationweather.gov METAR information page format, a non-working METAR code (i.e.; invalid code or no METAR information for that code) was not being recognized as such, and current weather conditions would be displayed as N/A (Not Available).
- Changing a Windows color scheme or applying a new WindowBlinds theme was not updating the background color of slider controls.
- The Wanda 'Hide/Show Systray Icon' right-click context menu option was not doing anything.
- Fixed bug with the easeInExpo and easeInOutExpo easings which would return the wrong value for t=0.
- In very specific circumstances the Weather module could display a moon icon during the day.
- If the user opened a dialog via a Always On Top dock, the dialog could still appear behind the dock even though the it was also set as 'always on top'.
- If the user opened a dialog via a Always On Top dock, any secondary dialogs would appear behind the parent dialog.
- When resolving shortcuts, if the shortcut had never been used before a MSI dialog would sometimes popup asking to install files. Normally letting MSI complete the install would fix the problem, but not always. This issue has been fixed and the MSI dialog should no longer pop up when resolving shortcuts.
- Minimized windows would lose their 'snap to edge' status when restored from the Winstep application.
- Full screen Adobe Flash videos were triggering a WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message which caused a reset of the reserved screen areas and subsequent screen flickering.
- The backup overwrite prompt appeared twice.
- Running indicators on the dock could take up to a second to refresh after uncollapsing/un-hiding the dock.
- After downloading and installing an updated language file via the Winstep Update Manager, the wrong language could be applied to the application.
- URLs and mail support addresses were still pointing to the old Proxma AG partner website in the German language file.
- Fixed extremelly annoying z-order bug that normally would only happen if a dock was at the bottom of the screen right above the taskbar. Conditions to trigger were: the user would be working on window A and would move the mouse pointer down to the taskbar, thus travelling across the dock, to give focus to window B. The user would click the relevant button in the taskbar and window B got the focus. As the user moved the mouse pointer to window B, it would travel across the dock again which would then (wrongly) bring window A to the top of the z-order (thus above window B).
- If the dock was docked to the top of the screen with the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting enabled, the distance between the top screen edge and the top edge of the dock might not be enough to show some of the effects without the icons becoming partially cropped at the top.
- Fixed issue that could cause the View Change Log parser to enter an infinite loop and hang the application.
- Fixed some issues with the opacity of the icon reflection as icons in the dock moved up and down.
- Fixed some cropping issues with icon reflections in the dock.
- The movement of the icon drop shadow in combination with the Bounce effect was not correct.
- The Recycler style drag & drop animation was not activating.
- A change to the 'Do not display confirmation when deleting' setting in the Delete Confirmation dialog itself might not be immediately reflected in the Recycler Settings dialog.
- Changing the 'Cache animated icons using original resolution' setting in the Performance Settings Advanced dialog was not causing a memory usage report to be displayed.
Nexus Ultimate v16.12 complete change log:
- Replaced the Female and Male Clock and Email Checker Voices with the new higher quality versions also used to report Battery power events.
- Added new 'Activate if hidden when an application in the dock requests attention' setting to the Activation Settings dialog of the dock's Behavior tab. Enabled by default, this setting controls whether the dock should pop up if hidden when an application with an icon in the dock starts flashing to get your attention.
- The Email Checker module is now able to use speech to report more than 59 new messages (up to 1 million).
- The Email Checker module now displays the number of new messages in the icon itself by default. This can be prevented by disabling the 'Show number of messages in the icon' setting in the Email Checker Settings dialog.
- The Email Checker now checks for new mail immediately after changing settings in the Email Checker Settings dialog, unless automatic checking has been disabled.
- Apparently some Registry Cleanners would sometimes delete Winstep uninstall information from the Windows Registry, which resulted in the user being unable to uninstall the software normally and in him being unable to update normally (trying to install an update via the Winstep Update Manager would result in an error message being displayed instead). Before downloading an upgrade the Winstep Update Manager now checks the Windows Registry for the existence of this critical uninstall section and, if it has been deleted, downloads and installs the full version instead of the smaller upgrade pack. Current settings, etc, are all preserved regardless.
- Module previews in the Module settings dialogs of Preferences now instantly reflect the proper background icons specified by the user via the 'Change Icon' dialog. Previously the Module Settings dialogs were not reflecting changes made to the background icons of modules until those changes were made effective either by pressing the Apply or Ok button in Preferences.
- Improved what happens when the user makes changes to a module in Preferences and then opens the Settings dialog for that module via the right click context menu while Preferences is still open.
- The automatic scaling of the Net Meter module has been changed to progress from 10 Kbit to 100 Kbit, 1 Mbit, 10 Mbits, 100 Mbits, 1 Gbit, 10 Gbits, etc...
- Optimized the performance of updating the meter modules (CPU, Net, RAM) in gauge style when smooth meters is enabled (which is by default).
- Added new Calendar module. Like all other modules it is available in two user-selectable styles: the classic iCal slanted look, and a vertical Flip Calendar look. Both styles can be colorized, with separate settings for the text color of the Month, Weekday and Day. These options make using customized calendar icon backgrounds very easy. The user can also select what happens when he clicks on the calendar icon: the module can either display a full blown calendar or launch a user-defined calendar application.
- Extensive re-organization and fine-tuning of all module related code, both to improve performance as well as to make it even easier to add new modules in the future.
- Made some cosmetic changes to the banner of the Alarm Manager dialog.
- Made some cosmetic changes to the Alarm Reminder in LCD Mode to better keep with the LCD theme: removed the degrees character from the temperature, added automatic replacement of foreign characters with western equivalent for the days of the week.
- Added 'Yearly' option to the clock Alarms - ideal to be reminded of birthdays and anniversaries.
- Yahoo changed the conditions of access to their Weather API, which caused the Yahoo backup weather feed to stop working. Restored this feed by using an alternate URL.
- The user can now define the units used to scale graphs manually in the Net Meter modules as either Bytes, KB, MB, Kbits or Mbits.
- If the Weather Module Settings dialog is open and a weather check is performed in the mean time, the information in the dialog is now updated too.
- METAR Weather information is now retrieved directly from a raw data NOAA server.
- Added 'From Now, On the Hour, Quarter Past, Half Past, Quarter Till' options to the 'Every x hours' daily clock alarm schedule.
- Response to the user pressing WIN+D is now almost instantaneous (before, the dock might momentarily flicker in and out of view).
- 'Restore Wallpaper' thumbnails now transition from wallpaper to wallpaper, when the Windows wallpaper slide-show is active, without first reverting to the general icon.
- WIN+D (Show Desktop) detection is now much more reliable. Microsoft deliberately did not provide a method to know when WIN+D just became active. Knowing when this happens is essential to prevent docks, etc, from hiding together with all other windows. The previous work-around method to detect WIN+D could sometimes falsely assume WIN+D was active if the user clicked on the desktop and no other windows were visible at the time. The changes applied to deal with (the falsely detected) WIN+D would then make docks set to always on top or always on bottom temporarily lose their z-order status.
- Added 'Apply Wallpaper' option to a theme's context menu in the Shelf Themes tab. Allows you to preview by thumbnail - and apply - the wallpaper associated with that theme.
- Under Windows 7 and later, if Desktop Composition is enabled the iconic window thumbnail extractor will use the DWM instead of PrintWindow to get a still thumbnail. This achieves success in most cases where PrintWindow would fail.
- The 'Busy' animation is now more responsive when starting up, restoring and backing up settings.
- The Weather and Email module now refresh automatically immediately after restoring old settings.
- The 'Get Weather' button in the weather Module Settings dialog now bypasses the current weather information cache and stores a diagnostics 'Weather.log' file in the Winstep user data folder.
- The clock module is now able to announce the time using the proper format for the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German.
- The email module is now able to count incoming messages using the proper format for the following languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German.
- Added new English, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese Brazilian and German voice packs with high quality voices and all the words required to properly announce the time and count messages in these languages.
- The Winstep Update Manager is now able to look for and update voice packs as well. By default the application only comes with English male and female voices, but if other voices packs are available in the user's own language, the Winstep Update Manager will notify the user and download them right after installation.
- When changing the currently selected language in Preferences, if a voice pack in the selected language exists, it will be automatically selected as well.
- Added a 'Open Folder' button in the Sounds tab of Preferences to show the folder containing the files for the currently selected Voice theme/pack.
- Dock icon labels now bounce up and down with the icon for effects such as jump, bounce, etc...
- Changed the Bounce effect so it's a bit more similar to the original Mac OSX bounce effect. Like the other effects, it now also has settings for fine-tuning magnitude and duration.
- Added a 'Magnify Settings' button to the Effects tab of a Dock Properties dialog, which allows changing settings for this effect directly when combined with other effects.
- Improved icon reflection rendering performance for themes such as KTEK-4D1 where icon reflections are 'cropped' to the background tile.
- Modified the Performance Settings dialog so the 'basic' slider values now perform a linear escalation as originally intended. The user can still 'pick and choose' in the Advanced dialog.
- Added smooth up and down scrolling to the Dock & Shelves tab in Preferences, as the previous abrupt 'row jump' offered very poor visual feedback.
- None of the settings in the Alarm Settings dialog (Initial Volume, Final Volume, LCD Style color, etc...) were being saved between sessions.
- Clicking the Default button in the METAR Server Settings dialog of the Weather module was restoring the previous, no longer working, NOAA weather link and search string.
- Because of the new aviationweather.gov METAR information page format, a non-working METAR code (i.e.; invalid code or no METAR information for that code) was not being recognized as such, and current weather conditions would be displayed as N/A (Not Available).
- Changing a Windows color scheme or applying a new WindowBlinds theme was not updating the background color of slider controls.
- The Battery module was logging a 'Overload! Battery critical' power event when the battery hardware signaled imminent failure during a power outage before the soft 'critical battery' threshold was reached. This also prevented entering and exiting of low power states from being logged. A 'Critical Battery' event is now logged instead.
- Changing the background image of a module via the Item Properties dialog was not refreshing that module's image on every dock and Shelf as it should.
- The Wanda 'Hide/Show Systray Icon' right-click context menu option was not doing anything.
- Fixed bug with the easeInExpo and easeInOutExpo easings which would return the wrong value for t=0.
- In very specific circumstances the Weather module could display a moon icon during the day.
- If the user opened a dialog via a Always On Top dock, the dialog could still appear behind the dock even though the it was also set as 'always on top'.
- If the user opened a dialog via a Always On Top dock, any secondary dialogs would appear behind the parent dialog.
- Clicking the Battery icon on a always on top dock would make the Battery Information dialog appear behind the dock.
- When resolving shortcuts, if the shortcut had never been used before a MSI dialog would sometimes popup asking to install files. Normally letting MSI complete the install would fix the problem, but not always. This issue has been fixed and the MSI dialog should no longer pop up when resolving shortcuts.
- Minimized windows would lose their 'snap to edge' status when restored from the Winstep application.
- Deleting the last dock in the Dock & Shelves tab of Preferences was erasing the dock's preview image.
- A newly created dock could use the settings of a disabled dock for initial icon size and position instead of the settings of the last active dock created.
- Full screen Adobe Flash videos were triggering a WM_DISPLAYCHANGE message which caused a reset of the reserved screen areas and subsequent screen flickering.
- The backup overwrite prompt appeared twice.
- Running indicators on docks could take up to a second to refresh after uncollapsing/un-hiding a dock.
- After downloading and installing an updated language file via the Winstep Update Manager, the wrong language could be applied to the application.
- URLs and mail support addresses were still pointing to the old Proxma AG partner website in the German language file.
- Fixed extremelly annoying z-order bug that normally would only happen if a dock was at the bottom of the screen right above the taskbar. Conditions to trigger were: the user would be working on window A and would move the mouse pointer down to the taskbar, thus travelling across the dock, to give focus to window B. The user would click the relevant button in the taskbar and window B got the focus. As the user moved the mouse pointer to window B, it would travel across the dock again which would then (wrongly) bring window A to the top of the z-order (thus above window B).
- If a dock was docked to the top of the screen with the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting enabled, the distance between the top screen edge and the top edge of the dock might not be enough to show some of the effects without the icons becoming partially cropped at the top.
- Fixed issue that could cause the View Change Log parser to enter an infinite loop and hang the application.
- Fixed some issues with the opacity of the icon reflection as icons in the dock moved up and down.
- Fixed some cropping issues with icon reflections in the dock.
- The movement of the icon drop shadow in combination with the Bounce effect was not correct.
- The Recycler style drag & drop animation was not activating.
- A change to the 'Do not display confirmation when deleting' setting in the Delete Confirmation dialog itself might not be immediately reflected in the Recycler Settings dialog.
- Changing the 'Cache animated icons using original resolution' setting in the Performance Settings Advanced dialog was not causing a memory usage report to be displayed.
Archived News
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Winstep Xtreme v23.11 Released!
December 8, 2023
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v23.11 adds per monitor taskbars and tasklists and mitigates Windows 11 22H2 changes and bugs, plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more
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Nexus Dock v23.11 Released!
December 8, 2023
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v23.11 adds per monitor tasklists for docks and mitigates Windows 11 22H2 changes and bugs, plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more
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Cyber Monday!
November 27, 2023
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Cyber Monday 2023 is here and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off for the next 24 hours. So, will you take the final chance to bag a deal?
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Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2022
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Winstep Xtreme v22.7 Released!
July 27, 2022
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v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more
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Nexus Dock v22.7 Released!
July 27, 2022
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v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more
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Happy Holidays 2021!
December 22, 2021
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Once again and still in difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!
Read more
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Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2020
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In this difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!
Read more
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Winstep Xtreme v20.10 Released!
October 28, 2020
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v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much more!
Read more
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Nexus Dock v20.10 Released!
October 28, 2020
-
v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much more!
Read more
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Happy Holidays!
December 18, 2019
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Read more
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Winstep 20th Annniversary!
February 28, 2019
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Winstep is celebrating 20 years in business with a fantastic, time-limited, price reduction all across the board! Enjoy it while it lasts!
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Winstep Xtreme v19.2 Released!
February 28, 2019
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v19.2 is mainly a maintenance release with a few goodies thrown in such as a matching Windows 10 Light Mode and much more!
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Nexus Dock v19.2 Released!
February 28, 2019
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v19.2 is mostly a maintenance release with a few goodies thrown in such as a matching Windows 10 Light Mode and much more!
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Happy Holidays!
December 17, 2018
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Winstep Xtreme v18.12 Released!
December 17, 2018
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Just in time for Christmas, v18.12 is a massive release featuring the new Grid Stacks, Search Filters, multi monitor profiles and much more!
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Nexus Dock v18.12 Released!
December 17, 2018
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Just in time for Christmas, v18.12 is a massive release featuring the new Grid Stacks and Search Filters (Nexus Ultimate), multi monitor profiles and much more!
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Cyber Monday!
November 26, 2018
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Cyber Monday 2018 is here and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off for the next 24 hours. So, will you take the final chance to bag a deal?
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Black Friday!
November 23, 2018
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Black Friday 2018 is upon us and Nexus Ultimate is 40% off.
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Winstep Xtreme v18.10 Released!
October 9, 2018
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Icon colorization, center icons in Shelves, Drawer resizing, improved handling of hybrid Win32/UWP apps, menu scaling and much more!
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Nexus Dock v18.10 Released!
October 9, 2018
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Icon colorization, improved handling of hybrid Win32/UWP apps, context menu scaling and much more!
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Price Increase Announcement
October 7, 2018
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After nearly 20 years providing the best products at competitive prices, Winstep is increasing the prices of all its applications for the first time - just to make up (barely) for inflation.
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Winstep Xtreme v18.8 Released!
August 30, 2018
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Major release featuring the new Drawers, support for multiple and vertical Shelves and much more!
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Nexus Dock v18.8 Released!
August 30, 2018
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Major release featuring new colorization options, new Drawers and support for multiple and vertical Shelves (Nexus Ultimate) and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v18.5 Released!
June 1, 2018
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Major release featuring the ability to access docks directly from NextSTART, new Delete Effect with 22 different animations, alarm overlays and much more!
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Nexus Dock v18.5 Released!
June 1, 2018
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Major release featuring new Delete Effect with many different animations, enhanced Media Player functionality and playlist handling, alarm overlays and much more!
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Winstep and the EU GDPR
May 25, 2018
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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU).
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Winstep Xtreme v18.3 Released!
March 31, 2018
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Major release with new alarm options, power saving modes and media player internal command, plus many other performance and stability improvements!
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Nexus Dock v18.3 Released!
March 31, 2018
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New alarm options, full dock keyboard support, power saving modes and media player internal command, plus many other performance and stability improvements!
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Winstep Xtreme v18.1 Released!
January 20, 2018
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New optional Dark Mode for the User Interface, new Windows 10 icons, many other performance and stability improvements!
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Nexus Dock v18.1 Released!
January 20, 2018
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New optional Dark Mode for the User Interface, new Windows 10 icons, many other performance and stability improvements!
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Winstep Xtreme v17.12 Released!
December 28, 2017
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A bit late for Christmas but still not too late, v17.2 is here. Many Windows 10 related additions and fixes and much more!
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Nexus Dock v17.12 Released!
December 28, 2017
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A bit late for Christmas but still not too late, v17.2 is here. Many Windows 10 related additions and fixes and much more!
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Happy Holidays!
December 22, 2017
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Cyber Monday!
November 27, 2017
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Cyber Monday 2017 is upon us and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off.
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Winstep Xtreme v17.1 Released!
January 27, 2017
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New moon module, new sub-dock options, smooth Shelf scrolling and much more!
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Nexus Dock v17.1 Released!
January 27, 2017
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Wallpaper hot-track smooth colorization transitions, new moon module and pop-up calendar (Nexus Ultimate), and much more!
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Happy Holidays!
December 23, 2016
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.12 Released!
December 8, 2016
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New calendar module, high-quality voice packs in multiple languages, and much more!
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Nexus Dock v16.12 Released!
December 8, 2016
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High-quality voice packs in multiple languages, Email Checker module now displays number of unread messages on the icon itself, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.9 Released!
September 30, 2016
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v16.9 is is mostly a maintenance release, fixing some issues in the previous version and restoring the NOOA/METAR Weather feed.
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Nexus Dock v16.9 Released!
September 30, 2016
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v16.9 is is mostly a maintenance release, fixing some issues in the previous version and restoring the NOOA/METAR Weather feed..
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Winstep Xtreme v16.6 Released!
June 27, 2016
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New Fast Boot option, running Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10 now display the proper icon and can be pinned to docks and the taskbar, and much more!
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Nexus Dock v16.6 Released!
June 27, 2016
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New Fast Boot option, running Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10 now display the proper icon and can be pinned to the dock, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.5 Released!
May 28, 2016
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NextSTART taskbar high-DPI support, new colorization options and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v16.5 Released!
May 28, 2016
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New colorization options, fixed 3D dock backgrounds distortion at certain icon sizes, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.3 Released!
March 10, 2016
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Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.
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Nexus Dock v16.3 Released!
March 10, 2016
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Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.
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Winstep Xtreme v16.2 Released!
February 11, 2016
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New battery module, clock alarms, 10 amazing new mouse-over, launch and attention effects and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v16.2 Released!
February 11, 2016
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Minimize windows to the dock, new internal commands, performance improvements and much more in this release!
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Winstep Xtreme v15.9 Released!
September 29, 2015
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High DPI compatibility, Language Bar, Weather module Geo location, better Windows 10 integration and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v15.9 Released!
September 29, 2015
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High DPI compatibility, combined dock shortcuts with running applications, Weather module Geo location, better Windows 10 integration and much more in this release!
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Winstep Xtreme v15.7 Released!
July 27, 2015
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Winstep Xtreme is now 100% compatible with Windows 10 and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v15.7 Released!
July 27, 2015
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Nexus is now 100% compatible with Windows 10 and much more in this new release!
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Windows 10 and Winstep applications
June 27, 2015
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With Windows 10 just around the corner, many users have been wondering if Winstep applications (Nexus, Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme) will work correctly with it.
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Winstep Xtreme v14.11 Released!
November 7, 2014
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Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!
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Nexus Dock v14.11 Released!
November 7, 2014
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Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!
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Take back what is yours!
March 23, 2012
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In an effort to force you into using Metro, Microsoft stripped the familiar Start Menu out of Windows 8. In the process it also stripped your ability to chose for yourself what is best for you.
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Winstep Xtreme v12.2 Released!
March 22, 2012
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This is a monster release, click the Read More link below for a guided tour on what's new!
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Nexus Dock v12.2 Released!
March 22, 2012
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This is a monster release, click the Read More link below for a guided tour on what's new!
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Winstep Xtreme v11.10 Released!
November 18, 2011
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Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, new Tray tab in Preferences, and more...
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Nexus Dock v11.10 Released!
November 18, 2011
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Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, and more...
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Weather feed down!
November 6, 2011
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Weather module not working? Find out why and what is being done about it.
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Winstep Xtreme v11.6 Released!
July 6, 2011
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Maintenance release of Winstep Xtreme.
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Nexus Dock v11.6 Released!
July 6, 2011
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Maintenance release of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate.
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New Winstep Theme: DarkTech
June 24, 2011
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Brought to you by the Winstep design team - more in-house themes currently in the pipeline.
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Winstep Xtreme v11.5 Released!
June 23, 2011
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System tray icon customization, ability to mix mouseover effects, support for animated icons, and much more!
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Nexus Dock v11.5 Released!
June 20, 2011
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Dock mouseover effects can now be combined with magnify effect, support for animated icons, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v11.2 Released!
March 14, 2011
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New release featuring increased support for Microsoft's High DPI virtualization technology, and much more!
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Nexus Dock v11.2 Released!
March 14, 2011
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New release featuring increased support for backgrounds of 3rd party docks, preserving aspect ratio of image thumbnails, and much more!
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Start Menu Organizer v1.5 Released!
March 14, 2011
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New release adding more languages and increasing compatibility with 64 bit versions of Windows!
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Winstep Xtreme v10.9 Released!
October 14, 2010
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Major release featuring nine new incredible dock mouseover effects, five new menu opening animations, Windows 7 "Superbar" ability with window previews and aeropeek capability on docks, horizontal sub-docks, and much more!
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Nexus Dock v10.9 Released!
October 8, 2010
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Major release featuring nine new incredible dock mouseover effects, Windows 7 "Superbar" ability with window previews and aeropeek capability, and much more!
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Nexus featured at Download.com!
October 8, 2010
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Nexus featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com!
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Start Menu Organizer v1.4 Released!
August 9, 2010
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Version 1.4 fixes an issue in which the Pro version of the program could stop when expanding the Administrative Tools group and adds support for 23 languages.
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Winstep Xtreme featured at Download.com!
July 18, 2010
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Winstep Xtreme has been featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com, not once, but twice!
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Winstep Xtreme v10.6 Final Released!
July 13, 2010
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Roughly 1 year in the making, the official upgrade to Winstep Xtreme v9.5 is finally here!
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Nexus Dock v10.6 Released!
July 13, 2010
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Maintenance release of our free popular Winstep Nexus dock.
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Winstep announces strategic alliance with Proxma AG!
July 13, 2010
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Proxma AG will market Winstep products in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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Start Menu Organizer v1.3 Released!
July 2, 2010
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New version of the Winstep Start Menu Organizer featuring support for even more languages.
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Welcome to our new web site!
June 15, 2010
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The Winstep web site gets a brand new face to match the quality of our products.
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