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Nexus Dock v16.2 Released!

February 11, 2016




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.

Windows 10 Ready Nexus runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 8.x and Windows 10.

v16.2 is another monster release, with hundreds of changes and additions. Focus was again on adding even more functionality - but this time with a ton of new eye-candy thrown in for good measure.


Important note to users of the free version of the Winstep Nexus Dock:

Even though users of the free version do not enjoy the one-click automated updates that Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme users do, they DO NOT NEED TO UNINSTALL THE PREVIOUS VERSION FIRST when installing a new version from Cnet's Download.com. Simply unzip, run setup and install the new version ON TOP.

Historically every single new 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.

The problem is that the incentive to upgrade to Nexus Ultimate remained the same, with many users thinking that the free version was either 'good enough' or feeling that the differences did not justify paying $24.95, despite having enjoyed the benefits of Nexus continuous development for years.

We have therefore decided to tackle this issue in two fronts: we have lowered the USD price of Nexus Ultimate to $19.95 and will from now on focus on increasing the advantages of Nexus Ultimate over its free little brother, starting with this release.

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 from now on most major new features, such as the new battery monitor module in v16.2, will be available to users of Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme only.

As a business, Winstep needs the support of paying customers to remain viable and justify the continued development of its industry leading products.
Winstep Nexus

Nexus Ultimate 23.11

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Thank you for your preference and your help in making Nexus one of the best Windows docks out there!

What's New? Highlighted Features:


  • New Battery Monitor module (Nexus Ultimate only)


    Monitors your battery or UPS power status, provides useful information regarding the type and condition of your battery, logs power events, provides voice and sound notifications regarding battery status and can run 3rd party applications, execute internal commands (such as Hibernate or Sleep), or issue screen and audio warnings whenever the battery level reaches specified thresholds.

  • New clock module associated alarms to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs at specific times, once or periodically.


    Please note that the free version of Nexus supports a single alarm, while Nexus Ultimate supports an unlimited number of alarms.

  • 10 amazing new mouse-over, launch and attention effects (Nexus Ultimate only)

    Shake, Fade In, Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubbles, Plasma and Wormhole.
    Flash and Jump are no longer restricted as attention and launch effects and can now also be used as mouse-over, launch and attention effects.


    Please note that the new Shake and Fade In effects are also available in the free version of Nexus.

  • New Effects Panel to help you visualize, select and quickly configure all your mouse-over, launch and attention effects.


  • Improved the smoothness of the dock when changing its own size or moving to a new position. Inserting items into the dock is now much smoother too.
  • Added new 'fade-out the old/fade-in the new' effect to when the user changes an icon or the dock renders a document thumbnail.
  • Nexus just keeps getting faster!

    The Aero Glass automatic background blur function is now about 8 times faster and uses 4 times less memory than before, with no visible loss of quality (Windows Vista/7 only plus 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).

    Enable double caching of icons in the Performance Settings dialog to increase the rendering speed of magnifying docks by up to 40%, at the cost of very little extra memory usage. A must-enable feature for users of systems with weaker CPUs who wish to enjoy the benefits of magnifying docks combined with other effects.


  • New settings added to the Performance Settings dialog to allow better user control of the quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.


  • New 'CD Control' and 'Lookup IP Address' internal commands.
    The CD Control internal command allows you to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. If you have more than one drive installed in your system you can select which drive the command applies to via the Item Properties dialog.

    The Lookup IP Address internal command returns the system's public IP address plus the user's current location and latitude/longitude coordinates, using Geo IP location technology.

  • Windows can now be minimized to the dock if the dock is configured to show currently running applications.
  • Icons of running applications on the left side of the dock now also display the number of open instances.
  • The Weather module now uses the sunrise and sunset times provided by the weather feed - when available - to decide whether to display a Sun or a Moon icon.
  • Weather information is now immediately updated after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.
  • Automatic retrieval of the user's location by the Weather module when running for the first time has been vastly improved.


  • Left clicking the dock's control icon now opens Nexus Preferences, or that dock's Properties panel under Nexus Ultimate. Please note that there is a short delay while the dock makes sure the user is not trying to double-click the icon instead (which would hide/collapse the dock).
  • Reorganized the User Interface so related options are now usually grouped together, even though that meant repeating some settings throughout the UI.
  • Improved existing support for high-DPI systems. The size of dock icon labels now also reflect current DPI settings.
  • Improved User Interface integration with Windows 10 when running under this version of Windows.
  • The Winstep Update Manager can now hide specific updates so the user is not notified again until an even newer version comes along.
  • ... many other performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...


Nexus v16.2 complete change log:


  • Updated the French language file.
  • Updated Italian language file (incomplete).
  • Updated Spanish language file.
  • Updated Indonesian language file.
  • Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file.
  • Greatly increased the odds of getting the user's correct location for the weather module based on IP address.
  • The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.
  • Updated the list of Internet Time Servers used by the clock module.
  • The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'. This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.
  • Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the dock.
  • Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).
  • Added backup Yahoo Weather feed to make up for the fact that the Google Weather feed is no longer available.Current available feeds are NOOA for current conditions plus Weather.com, MSN Weather and Yahoo Weather for current/forecast conditions.
  • Updated the Net Statistics dialog which still showed the old UI.
  • Icon shifting to make room for new items being dragged into the dock is now a bit smoother than before.
  • Improved the smoothness of adding items to and re-arranging items in the dock.
  • Changes to the dock's position now make it smoothly 'slide in' into the new screen location instead of instantly jumping into place.
  • Added 'Auto-Detect Location' to the right click context menu of the Weather module, to update the user's current location based on his IP address.
  • Clock settings panel now shows previews for both the analog and digital clock style.
  • Added Alarms/Event Scheduling to the Clock Module.The free version of Nexus supports a single Alarm. Alarms can be created to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs/internal commands at specific times, once or periodically. Alarm events can optionally wake the computer up if Sleeping or Hibernating.Users can build their own MP3/WMA playlists or use existing M3U playlists for musical alarms, which also feature Snooze and Easy-Wake (sound volume increases with time) abilities.
  • Completely re-organized module's internal structures so it's much easier to add new modules in the future.
  • Changed the default 'Attention' effect from 'Flash' to 'Sonic Boom'.
  • Average CpU usage is now monitored and an alert displayed if Nexus consistently uses over 90% of one core for over 5 minutes.
  • Weather information is now cached for an hour to prevent hammering the weather servers unnecessarily.
  • If one of the weather feeds being used provides sunrise and sunset times, the weather module is now able to determine more accurately whether to display a Sun or Moon icon.
  • Icons of currently running applications on the left side of the dock now also display the number of instances when the 'Combine dock icons with running applications' and 'Group similar windows into a single icon' settings are both enabled.
  • Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.
  • Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default.The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.
  • Added new 'CD Control' internal command.Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.
  • Reorganized the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties panel and added 'Activation Settings' and 'Auto-Hide Settings' panels.
  • You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.
  • The Weather module information is now automatically updated immediately after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.
  • Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.
  • Added a 'Capture Desktop Settings' configuration panel to the right click menu of the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.
  • Moved the customized 'Explosion animation' settings to the Recycler Module Settings panel.
  • Re-organized the Advanced Settings panel (Preferences -> General -> More Options).
  • Added new 'Fade in' mouseover, launch and attention effect.All icons are semi-transparent and fade-in to opaque when you mouse over them, then fade out to semi-transparent as you mouse away. Initial transparency can be modified by changing normal icon transparency, otherwise it's 50%.
  • For security reasons the clock module now displays a warning dialog if the time difference between the system clock and the Time Server is larger than 15 hours, giving the user a choice to adjust the time anyway or otherwise cancelling the operation. Cancelling opens the Date and Time Windows dialog (so the user can manually change the date and time) as well as the Clock Module Settings Panel (so the user can alternatively disable automatic time synchronization).
  • Left clicking the dock's control icon now opens Nexus Preferences.
  • 'Flash' and 'Jump' are now avaiable as Mouseover, Launch and Attention effects.
  • Switched the names of the 'Bounce' and 'Jump' effects.
  • Renamed the 'Fire' effect to 'Explode'.
  • Effects can now be selected and configured from the new 'Effects Panel'.The new panel allows you to visualize effects before applying them.
  • The Mouseover, Launch and Attention items of the main right click context menu of the dock now open the new Effects Panel instead of displaying a menu with the effect names.
  • Added new 'Shake' mouseover, launch and attention effect.Eight other effects - Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubble, Plasma and Wormhole - are also shown in the Effects panel but are exclusive to Nexus Ultimate/Winstep Xtreme.
  • When the icon of an item is changed (either automatically when rendering document thumbnails or manually by the user via drag & drop or the Item Properties Editor) the old version now smoothly fades out while the new version fades into place.
  • Added new settings to the Performance vs.Memory Usage panel. The new settings allow the user to control quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.
  • To help troubleshooting, clicking the 'Test Voice' and 'Test Sounds' buttons in the Sound tab in Preferences now displays a warning dialog if the application has not detected a sound card in the system.
  • Major re-organization of the Position and Behavior tabs in Preferences to fix a common complaint that some related settings were scattered throughout the UI, which made locating them and understanding their relation difficult.Related settings are now grouped together, even though this means some of them will now appear more than once at different places in the UI.
  • If the Weather.com weather feed is down, the next resort is now the Yahoo feed, since it has sunrise and sunset times which the MSN feed does not. The MSN feed is now the last resort.
  • Clicking the Net Meter module now opens the 'Active Connections' panel instead of the Net Statistics panel.
  • Added new 'Lookup IP Address' internal command.Returns the public IP address as well as current location and latitude/longitude coordinates.
  • Added 'Manage Alarms' button to the General tab of Preferences.
  • Added new 'Enable double caching of icons (speed boost)' option to the Performance Settings dialog in the Advanced tab of Preferences. Disabled by default, enable it to boost the rendering speed of magnifying docks by a factor of 2 or more, at the cost of a little bit more memory usage.
  • Speeded up the initial construction of the semi-transparent blur regions by up to 4 times and cut their memory usage also by 4, without no noticeable visual drawbacks (Vista/7 only).
  • Dock icon labels are now also affected by the system's high-DPI settings.
  • The 'Most Active Programs History' dialog (accessible by right clicking the CPU Meter module) now also shows the second most active process and its CPU usage for each second of the last 5 minutes.The list can also be made to refresh automatically.
  • The 'Bring mouse forward when mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting makes the dock come on top of other windows when you bump the associated screen edge, regardless of it being docked or free floating. To help with annoying accidental activations, moving the mouse away from the dock after it comes forward now brings the window that previously had the focus to the foreground.
  • Icons now 'glow' when dragging an .ICO, .PNG or .TIF image over a dock shortcut to give a visual cue to the user that dropping that image there will replace the target's shortcut icon.
  • Improved User Interface integration with Windows 10 when running under this version of Windows.
  • Live window preview thumbnails were not going away when the user moved the pointer off the dock.
  • The 'Disable reflections when dock is vertical' option would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.
  • Right clicking on a live preview thumbnail would show a context menu, but the menu would close itself automatically almost immediately after.
  • No file context menu would open if you right-clicked a file of a 'Browse Container' or 'Browse' sub-menu.
  • The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Espaņol' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.
  • Fixed bug that could cause the Net Meter module not to show all existing network adapters.
  • The Item Properties Editor panel was not automatically changing the icon when editing the path of Folder type items.
  • Fixed several issues with the dock becoming wonky when dragging items over it.
  • Menus displaying a list of voice and sound themes no longer display a question mark thumbnail.
  • Themes without a thumbnail now display a generic theme icon thumbnail instead of a question mark icon.
  • The attention effect was not activating for items pined to the dock when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.
  • The attention effect didn't affect the correct task icon when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.
  • On multi-monitor systems hiding or showing a dock would leave visible left-overs on the other monitor if the dock was attached to a common screen edge.
  • Native Nexus 'Tiles' skinning mode themes with the 'Zoom tiles when magnifying' option were not being rendered properly when the dock magnified.
  • The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.
  • Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.
  • The 'Always at the base of the icon' option for running indicators would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.
  • The clock module no longer syncs the time with the Internet Time Servers every time the application starts regardless of the check interval.
  • Changes made in the Clock Speech and Sound Settings dialog of the Clock Module Settings panel would still be effective even if the user later pressed Cancel in the Settings panel.
  • Maximized Google Chrome windows were being interpreted as full screen windows, which caused the application to automatically stop reacting to edge bumps (necessary so edge bumps are not accidentally activated when playing a full screen game, for instance).
  • The 'Combine dock icons with running applications' setting always became enabled after a restart of the application.
  • The Weather module was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.
  • The 24 hour or AM/PM format was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.
  • The digital clock module was displaying '12 AM' when it should display '12 PM'.
  • Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x
  • The contents of an open weather forecast sub-dock were not being updated when weather information was refreshed.
  • Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).
  • Changes to the custom module icons were sometimes not being saved.
  • The Silent Period combo boxes were showing '12 AM' as '0 AM' and '12 PM' as '12 AM'.
  • Fixed bug which would prevent some modules from using a customized bitmap without restarting the application if the bitmap had been updated but the filename remained the same.
  • Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead.This allows the user to specifically run customized shortcuts.
  • The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.
  • The new 'smoothly move into place' feature, combined with the 'new item' animation, was causing items added to the end of the dock to momentarily appear outside the same.
  • Re-arranging tasklist items in the dock via drag & drop was broken.
  • Fixed some problems with the 'remove item from dock' animation if the mouse pointer was at the end or begining of the dock and the dock was magnifying.
  • Customizing the icon of a task item via drag & drop of an ICO or PNG image could apply the new icon to the wrong item under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed problem where the mouseover effect would 'stick' to an icon and keep playing even though the mouse pointer was no longer over the dock.
  • Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion lists.Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.
  • Weather module icon now flashes to give some feedback to the user even when the weather information is retrieved from the cache.
  • The Effect Settings buttons in the Dock Properties panel were configuring the wrong effect in Beta 2.
  • The Outline and Shadow text styles were not being scaled up properly on high-DPI systems.
  • Fixed a handful of high-DPI related glitches.
  • Fixed bug in beta 2 that could cause the new CD Control internal command to block or report an error.
  • The 'Most Active Programs' list was logging an empty entry if all processes were using less than 1% CPU.
  • Fixed issue in which an item belonging to the same dock would not be deleted when dropped into the recycler module if the insertion point was before the module.
  • The clock module tooltip was using the current system settings to display the time in 24 or 12 hour format. It now uses the setting specified for the clock module.
  • The wrong icon could be displayed for a customized task items when selecting it from a DLL.
  • if the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting was enabled the top of the icons could go a bit beyond the top screen edge when magnifying on certain dock backgrounds.


Nexus Ultimate v16.2 complete change log:


  • Updated the French language file.
  • Updated Italian language file (incomplete).
  • Updated Spanish language file.
  • Updated Indonesian language file.
  • Updated Portuguese (Brazil) language file (incomplete).
  • Greatly increased the odds of getting the user's correct location for the weather module based on IP address.
  • The current language is now automatically refreshed after a language pak update.
  • Updated the list of Internet Time Servers used by the clock module.
  • The Update Manager can now hide an update by selecting 'Never (Hide this Update)' from 'Remind me again in'. This enables the user to hide a particular update he is not interested in without having to deactivate Update Notification altogether.
  • Windows can now be minimized to and restored from the dock.
  • Calculating the Aero Glass blur effect is now about 4 times faster with no apparent loss of quality (Vista/7 only or 8/10 with AeroGlass installed).
  • Added backup Yahoo Weather feed to make up for the fact that the Google Weather feed is no longer available. Current available feeds are NOOA for current conditions plus Weather.
  • com, MSN Weather and Yahoo Weather for current/forecast conditions.
  • Updated the Net Statistics dialog which still showed the old UI.
  • Icon shifting to make room for new items being dragged into the dock is now a bit smoother than before.
  • Improved the smoothness of adding items to and re-arranging items in the dock.
  • Changes to the dock's position now make it smoothly 'slide in' into the new screen location instead of instantly jumping into place.
  • Added 'Auto-Detect Location' to the right click context menu of the Weather module, to update the user's current location based on his IP address.
  • Clock settings panel now shows previews for both the analog and digital clock style.
  • Added Alarms/Event Scheduling to the Clock Module. Alarms can now be created to display pop-up reminders, wake you up with music or run programs/internal commands at specific times, once or periodically. Alarm events can optionally wake the computer up if Sleeping or Hibernating. Users can build their own MP3/WMA playlists or use existing M3U playlists for musical alarms, which also feature Snooze and Easy-Wake (sound volume increases with time) abilities.
  • Completely re-organized module's internal structures so it's much easier to add new modules in the future.
  • Added new battery/UPS monitor module. Module includes a vertical and an horizontal style and optionally display current battery charge and runtime (when available). Ability to log power events and display a warning or run an application/internal command on low and critical battery level events.
  • Changed the default 'Attention' effect from 'Flash' to 'Sonic Boom'.
  • Average CpU usage is now monitored and an alert displayed if Nexus consistently uses over 90% of one core for over 5 minutes.
  • Weather information is now cached for an hour to prevent hammering the weather servers unnecessarily.
  • If one of the weather feeds being used provides sunrise and sunset times, the weather module is now able to determine more accurately whether to display a Sun or Moon icon.
  • Icons of currently running applications on the left side of the dock now also display the number of instances when the 'Combine dock icons with running applications' and 'Group similar windows into a single icon' settings are both enabled.
  • The battery module in the dock/shelf now flashes for one second when the battery transitions from AC Power to On Battery.
  • Added a 'Check for Updates' button to the About tab in Preferences, just below the version number.
  • Changed the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting to be off by default. The user must explicitily enable this option if he wishes to be notified of public beta versions.
  • Added visual 'glass mode' (transparent battery) option to the battery module.
  • Added ability to disable the battery charging animation.
  • Added battery voice and sound notifications for battery events.
  • Added new 'CD Control' internal command. Allows the user to know at a glance what type of media is currently inserted into a CD-ROM type drive, and opens/closes the CD tray when clicked on. Automatically replaces any existing 'Open CD-ROM' and 'Close CD-ROM' internal commands in use.
  • Reorganized the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties panel and added 'Activation Settings' and 'Auto-Hide Settings' panels.
  • You can now drag & drop .ico, .png, .tif, .dll and .exe files directly into the Icon Browser dialog as an alternative to browsing for a file.
  • The Weather module information is now automatically updated immediately after returning from Sleep or Hibernation.
  • Renamed 'Fast User Switching' internal command to 'Lock Computer'.
  • Added a 'Capture Desktop Settings' configuration panel to the right click menu of the 'Capture Desktop' internal command.
  • Moved the customized 'Explosion animation' settings to the Recycler Module Settings panel.
  • Re-organized the Advanced Settings panel (Preferences -> General -> More Options).
  • Added new 'Fade in' mouseover, launch and attention effect. All icons are semi-transparent and fade-in to opaque when you mouse over them, then fade out to semi-transparent as you mouse away. Initial transparency can be modified by changing normal icon transparency, otherwise it's 50%.
  • Floating mouseover icon labels for a Shelf set to display no labels below the icons now appear below the icon instead of outside the Shelf.
  • For security reasons the clock module now displays a warning dialog if the time difference between the system clock and the Time Server is larger than 15 hours, giving the user a choice to adjust the time anyway or otherwise cancelling the operation. Cancelling opens the Date and Time Windows dialog (so the user can manually change the date and time) as well as the Clock Module Settings Panel (so the user can alternatively disable automatic time synchronization).
  • Left clicking a dock's control icon now opens the Dock Properties dialog for that dock.
  • 'Flash' and 'Jump' are now avaiable as Mouseover, Launch and Attention effects.
  • Switched the names of the 'Bounce' and 'Jump' effects.
  • Renamed the 'Fire' effect to 'Explode'.
  • Effects can now be selected and configured from the new 'Effects Panel'. The new panel allows you to visualize effects before applying them.
  • The Mouseover, Launch and Attention items of the main right click context menu for docks and the Shelf now open the new Effects Panel instead of displaying a menu with the names of the effects.
  • Added nine additional mouseover, launch and attention effects: Shake, Fire, Energize, Swirl, Ion Storm, Ignite, Bubble, Plasma and Wormhole.
  • When the icon of an item is changed (either automatically when rendering document thumbnails or manually by the user via drag & drop or the Item Properties Editor) the old version now smoothly fades out while the new version fades into place.
  • Added new settings to the Performance vs. Memory Usage panel. The new settings allow the user to control quality of the effects vs. speed vs. memory usage.
  • To help troubleshooting, clicking the 'Test Voice' and 'Test Sounds' buttons in the Sound tab in Preferences now displays a warning dialog if the application has not detected a sound card in the system.
  • Major re-organization of the Position and Behavior tabs in the Properties panels of the Shelf and docks to fix a common complaint that some related settings were scattered throughout the UI, which made locating them and understanding their relation difficult. Related settings are now grouped together, even though this means some of them will now appear more than once at different places in the UI.
  • If the Weather.com weather feed is down, the next resort is now the Yahoo feed, since it has sunrise and sunset times which the MSN feed does not. The MSN feed is now the last resort.
  • Renamed the 'Customize' button in the Themes tab to 'Fonts'.
  • Added a 'Fonts' button to the Appearence tab of the Shelf Properties dialog to open the Fonts Manager dialog. This allows the user to customize the text used in the Shelf for the current theme and should solve the problem of the user confusing this with the font settings used for the external label when the number of icon text lines in the Shelf was set to zero.
  • Clicking the Net Meter module now opens the 'Active Connections' panel instead of the Net Statistics panel.
  • Added new 'Lookup IP Address' internal command. Returns the public IP address as well as current location and latitude/longitude coordinates.
  • Added 'Manage Alarms' button to the General tab of Preferences.
  • Added new 'Enable double caching of icons (speed boost)' option to the Performance Settings dialog in the Advanced tab of Preferences. Disabled by default, enable it to boost the rendering speed of magnifying docks by a factor of 2 or more, at the cost of a little bit more memory usage.
  • Speeded up the initial construction of the semi-transparent blur regions by up to 4 times and cut their memory usage also by 4, without no noticeable visual drawbacks (Vista/7 only).
  • Dock icon labels are now also affected by the system's high-DPI settings.
  • The 'Most Active Programs History' dialog (accessible by right clicking the CPU Meter module) now also shows the second most active process and its CPU usage for each second of the last 5 minutes. The list can also be made to refresh automatically.
  • The 'Bring mouse forward when mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting makes the dock come on top of other windows when you bump the associated screen edge, regardless of it being docked or free floating. To help with annoying accidental activations, moving the mouse away from the dock after it comes forward now brings the window that previously had the focus to the foreground.
  • Icons now 'glow' when dragging an .ICO, .PNG or .TIF image over a dock or Shelf shortcut to give a visual cue to the user that dropping that image there will replace the target's shortcut icon.
  • Improved User Interface integration with Windows 10 when running under this version of Windows.
  • Live window preview thumbnails were not going away when the user moved the pointer off the dock.
  • The 'Disable reflections when dock is vertical' option would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.
  • Right clicking on a live preview thumbnail would show a context menu, but the menu would close itself automatically almost immediately after.
  • No file context menu would open if you right-clicked a file of a 'Browse Container' or 'Browse' sub-menu.
  • The Winstep Update Manager incorrectly listed 'Spanish' instead of 'Espaņol' as the localized name for the Spanish language file, which caused it to always display the text in English for Spanish users and also made it impossible to automatically update Spanish language files.
  • Fixed bug that could cause the Net Meter module not to show all existing network adapters.
  • The Item Properties Editor panel was not automatically changing the icon when editing the path of Folder type items.
  • Fixed several issues with the dock becoming wonky when dragging items over it.
  • Double clicking just outside the left mini-tab when the Shelf was collapsed would cause it to open with an empty tab.
  • Menus displaying a list of voice and sound themes no longer display a question mark thumbnail.
  • Themes without a thumbnail now display a generic theme icon thumbnail instead of a question mark icon.
  • The attention effect was not activating for items pined to the dock when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.
  • The attention effect didn't affect the correct task icon when 'combine dock icons with running applications' was enabled.
  • On multi-monitor systems hiding or showing a dock would leave visible left-overs on the other monitor if the dock was attached to a common screen edge.
  • When double clicking a Shelf tab to fully expand the Shelf, the Shelf would only resize smoothly if attached to the bottom screen edge.
  • Native Nexus 'Tiles' skinning mode themes with the 'Zoom tiles when magnifying' option were not being rendered properly when the dock magnified.
  • The Winstep Update Manager was not warning the user when a new version falled outside his paid update subscription period.
  • The option to make the Wanda module swim on the desktop was visible in the Wanda settings dialog, but shouldn't be since it's for the desktop module version of Wanda and Nexus Ultimate does not support desktop modules.
  • The Winstep Update Manager was not able to distribute language packs for which the Winstep Update Manager itself did not have a language file.
  • Fixed problem preventing updates to the Portuguese (Brasil) and Spanish language packs due to incorrect configuration names.
  • The 'Always at the base of the icon' option for running indicators would not retain a disabled setting from session to session.
  • The clock module no longer syncs the time with the Internet Time Servers every time the application starts regardless of the check interval.
  • Dropping a shortcut into a Folder type Shelf tab was moving/copying the source file instead of the shortcut itself.
  • It wasn't possible to make a copy of a file via CTRL + Drop in a Folder type Shelf, the drop would simply be ignored.
  • Changes made in the Clock Speech and Sound Settings dialog of the Clock Module Settings panel would still be effective even if the user later pressed Cancel in the Settings panel.
  • Maximized Google Chrome windows were being interpreted as full screen windows, which caused the application to automatically stop reacting to edge bumps (necessary so edge bumps are not accidentally activated when playing a full screen game, for instance).
  • The 'Combine dock icons with running applications' setting always became enabled after a restart of the application.
  • The Weather module was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.
  • The 24 hour or AM/PM format was not being reset properly when reseting settings to default via Troubleshooting Options in Preferences.
  • The digital clock module was displaying '12 AM' when it should display '12 PM'.
  • Search internal command was broken in Windows 8.x
  • The contents of an open weather forecast sub-dock were not being updated when weather information was refreshed.
  • Clicking the Action Center icon twice with re-open the Action Center window instead of closing it (Windows 10 only).
  • Changes to the custom module icons were sometimes not being saved.
  • The Silent Period combo boxes were showing '12 AM' as '0 AM' and '12 PM' as '12 AM'.
  • The battery charge levels in the demo animations for the battery module were going to negative values if a language other than English was selected.
  • Fixed bug which would prevent some modules from using a customized bitmap without restarting the application if the bitmap had been updated but the filename remained the same.
  • Running a link to a shortcut no longer automatically executes the target instead. This allows the user to specifically run customized shortcuts.
  • The icon browser dialog was not displaying icons for known document file types.
  • Sub-docks now complete the Launch animation (if any) before automatically closing.
  • The new 'smoothly move into place' feature, combined with the 'new item' animation, was causing items added to the end of the dock to momentarily appear outside the same.
  • Re-arranging tasklist items in the dock via drag & drop was broken.
  • Fixed some problems with the 'remove item from dock' animation if the mouse pointer was at the end or begining of the dock and the dock was magnifying.
  • Customizing the icon of a task item via drag & drop of an ICO or PNG image could apply the new icon to the wrong item under certain circumstances.
  • Fixed problem where the mouseover effect would 'stick' to an icon and keep playing even though the mouse pointer was no longer over the dock.
  • Removed limit of 99 entries for the number of system tray and task icons being customized, as well as for the window thumbnail and task exclusion list. Although no warning was issued if the user went over this limit, the lists would become corrupted with some entries missing and others overwritten.
  • Weather module icon now flashes to give some feedback to the user even when the weather information is retrieved from the cache.
  • The Effect Settings buttons in the Dock Properties panel were configuring the wrong effect in Beta 2.
  • The charge and run time fonts of the battery module were not being scaled properly for high-DPI systems.
  • The Outline and Shadow text styles were not being scaled up properly on high-DPI systems.
  • Fixed a handful of high-DPI related glitches.
  • Fixed bug in beta 2 that could cause the new CD Control internal command to block or report an error.
  • The 'Most Active Programs' list was logging an empty entry if all processes were using less than 1% CPU.
  • Fixed issue in which an item belonging to the same dock would not be deleted when dropped into the recycler module if the insertion point was before the module.
  • The clock module tooltip was using the current system settings to display the time in 24 or 12 hour format. It now uses the setting specified for the clock module.
  • The wrong icon could be displayed for a customized task items when selecting it from a DLL.
  • if the 'Do not flip background for docks at the top of the screen' setting was enabled the top of the icons could go a bit beyond the top screen edge when magnifying on certain dock backgrounds.

Archived News

Cyber Monday!

November 27, 2023

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

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep Xtreme v22.7 Released!

July 27, 2022

v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!

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Nexus Dock v22.7 Released!

July 27, 2022

v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!

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Happy Holidays 2021!

December 22, 2021

Once again and still in difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!

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Happy Holidays!

December 20, 2020

In this difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!

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Winstep Xtreme v20.10 Released!

October 28, 2020

v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much 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!

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Happy Holidays!

December 18, 2019

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep 20th Annniversary!

February 28, 2019

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

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

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

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep Xtreme v18.12 Released!

December 17, 2018

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

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

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

Black Friday 2018 is upon us and Nexus Ultimate is 40% off.

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Winstep Xtreme v18.10 Released!

October 9, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Cyber Monday!

November 27, 2017

Cyber Monday 2017 is upon us and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off.

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Winstep Xtreme v17.1 Released!

January 27, 2017

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

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

Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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Winstep Xtreme v16.12 Released!

December 8, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.

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Nexus Dock v16.3 Released!

March 10, 2016

Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.

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Winstep Xtreme v16.2 Released!

February 11, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!

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Nexus Dock v14.11 Released!

November 7, 2014

Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!

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Take back what is yours!

March 23, 2012

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

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

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

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

Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, and more...

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Weather feed down!

November 6, 2011

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

Maintenance release of Winstep Xtreme.

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Nexus Dock v11.6 Released!

July 6, 2011

Maintenance release of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate.

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New Winstep Theme: DarkTech

June 24, 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nexus featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com!

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Start Menu Organizer v1.4 Released!

August 9, 2010

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

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

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

Maintenance release of our free popular Winstep Nexus dock.

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Winstep announces strategic alliance with Proxma AG!

July 13, 2010

Proxma AG will market Winstep products in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

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Start Menu Organizer v1.3 Released!

July 2, 2010

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

The Winstep web site gets a brand new face to match the quality of our products.

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