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The previous English default voice pack had a very low sampling rate because it was originally made when Internet speeds where still measured in Kbits/second - back then the size of installation files mattered very much, and sound files used a big chunk of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 setup 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.

Like all other modules, the new calendar is available in two different styles: Classic and Flip-calendar. The desktop version of the module will show a full blown calendar - matching the currently selected style - even when no specific skin is available for it.




Besides many other customization options allowing the use of different icon backgrounds and colors for the iconic version of the module, the user can also choose what happens when he clicks on it: it can either display a pop-up version of the desktop calendar, or launch a user-specified application (which normally would be a 3rd party calendar application).

Double clicking the date on the desktop calendar module returns the calendar to the current month and pressing the SHIFT key while clicking on the arrows makes the calendar jump a year at a time.


• More Alarm Manager options plus integration with the new Calendar module.

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. The Calendar module will highlight days with alarm events and alarms can be added, edited or deleted directly from the calendar itself by clicking on the respective day. Hovering the mouse pointer over a specific day will pop up a tooltip describing any events for that day.


• 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.


• New Digital desktop clock module.

The desktop version of modules in Winstep Xtreme are free-form and fully skinnable but only have a single look (defined by the creator of theme), unlike their iconic little brothers which always have two different styles. While the iconic version of the clock module can be either digital or analog, traditionally every theme author has gone for the analog look for the clock desktop modules.

This frustrated many users who would like to have a digital clock on their desktops instead but couldn't... until now. Achieving this is a bit convoluted, but here is how it works:

When a theme creator has not provided a theme/skin for a particular desktop module, that module will assume the look - and style - of the iconic version. v16.12 added the ability to specify 'No Theme' for a particular module, which thus forces the desktop version of that module to assume the iconic look and style.

If we do this to the clock module and the currently selected style is Digital, the desktop clock module will now appear in digital format. You can then use the scaling function to reduce or enlarge the size of the module - and also 'lock the theme' so that switching to a different global theme does not affect our digital desktop clock. All this can be done from the desktop clock's right click context menu.


• Integration of the new Calendar module with the clock module.

Clicking the clock module will now open the pop-up version of the Calendar module by default. A new 'Show Windows calendar' setting has been added to the Clock Settings panel to make the clock show the Windows calendar as before.


• 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.
• Optimized performance of the 'Smooth Meters' setting which now also affects bar-graphs and multi-state images in desktop modules for a smoother experience.
• New 'Enable smooth text scrolling' setting added to the Performance dialog, enabling pixel-by-pixel scrolling of text in desktop modules.
• Many other User Interface, performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...

WorkShelf 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).
• If the Smooth Meters option is enabled (it is by default), bar graphs (including those made by multi-state images) in desktop modules now increase and decrease smoothly, instead of abruptly updating to a new size every second like before.
• 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.
• Added desktop version of the new calendar module. Unlike the other modules that display the iconic version of the module when no theme has been assigned to it, the defaults are full blown calendars matching the currently selected style (iCal or Flip calendar).
• 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.
• All desktop modules now support overlay bitmaps (previously only the Net, CPU, RAM and Wanda desktop modules did). All modules now also support 'ticker' (scrolling text) when the text information does not fit in the available space. Since the vast majority of the code is now shared between modules, adding new features to one automatically adds it to all the others. In part because of this, it also became a lot easier to add more types of text information to existing modules (for instance, the clock module can now support separate hour, minute and second text fields, making it easier to make digital desktop clock themes). All these improvements are, unfortunately, still greatly dependent on the upcoming release of the Winstep Theme Builder. Backward compatibility with older themes has been maintained, but new themes will not display properly on older versions.
• 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.
• The desktop version of the Calendar module is now tied to the Clock Alarms. Days with clock alarm events are marked on the calendar, clicking a day allows you to edit/delete an existing alarm or add a new alarm. Clicking the date at the top takes you back to the current day.
• Added new 'Enable smooth text scrolling' setting to the Performance dialog. Turning this option on enables smooth pixel-by-pixel text scrolling on desktop meters. The drawback is that a module is then updated four times faster than before.
• 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.
• Added two new skinning settings for bar graphs in desktop meter modules (CPU, Net, RAM) that allow the skinner to define start and end margins in the bar bitmap. This allows, for instance, bars with curved start and end points, something that previously could only be accomplished by using multi-state images. Together with the Smooth Meters setting now also affecting bar graphs, this allows for bar graphs with really smooth variations.
• 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.
• Clicking the clock module will now open the pop-up version of the Calendar module by default. Added new 'Show Windows calendar' setting to the Clock Settings panel to make the clock show the Windows calendar as before.
• 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.
• Fixed memory leak that would happen if the caching of desktop module images was disabled in Performance Settings dialog and the Wanda desktop module was open.
• 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.
• The Windows 7 style balloon tooltip arrow was not properly centered on desktop modules.
• 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.
• When changing the language in WorkShelf, the wrong language could be applied to NextSTART.
• 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.

NextSTART v16.12 complete change log:

• 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.
• Response to the user pressing WIN+D is now almost instantaneous (before, the taskbar might momentarily flicker in and out of view).
• 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 the taskbar, hotspot buttons, 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 hotspot buttons or a taskbar set to always on top to temporarily lose their z-order status.
• Added support for capturing the new WorkShelf Calendar desktop module to the taskbar.
• Settings should now load a bit faster, increasing startup and theme loading performance.
• The 'Busy' animation is now more responsive when starting up, restoring and backing up settings.
• Changing a Windows color scheme or applying a new WindowBlinds theme was not updating the background color of slider controls.
• Fixed bug with the easeInExpo and easeInOutExpo easings which would return the wrong value for t=0.
• 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.
• Themes with sub-themes were not being properly backed up or restored.
• The backup overwrite prompt appeared twice.
• When changing the language in NextSTART, the wrong language could be applied to WorkShelf.
• 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 issue that could cause the View Change Log parser to enter an infinite loop and hang the application.