Nexus Dock v11.6 Released! July 6, 2011

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, Vista Blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, Nexus has thousands of backgrounds freely available online and is fully compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.

Combine different dock mouse over effects with the Magnify effect...

Version 11.6 is a maintenance release that fixes all the reported issues with v11.5 and corrects a couple of wrong decisions made on v11.5: edge bump to activate the dock being disabled by default and generic icons being displayed on the dock if rendering icons took longer than 400 ms.

Built-in support for animated icons...

What's New? Highlighted Features (v11.5 + v11.6):

Dock mouse over effects can now be combined with the Magnify effect.
Added System Tray icon customization (Nexus Ultimate).
Added ability to align a docked Shelf by dragging it (Nexus Ultimate).
New Teleport and Push dock mouse over effects.
New Gauge style for the CPU, Net and RAM meters.
Replaced legacy module images with new high resolution versions.
Added built-in support for animated icons.
Added independent vertical and horizontal icon spacing settings.
Added independent transparency settings for dock background and icons.
Categorized the Internal Commands.
Major re-organization of the User Interface to make it more intuitive.
Improved Drag & Drop support.
Improved multi-monitor support.
... and much more! Please see complete change log below...

Nexus v11.6 complete change log:

Updated Korean language file.
Updated German language file.
Updated Hungarian language file.
Updated Polish language file.
Added 'Show this dock when the mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting to the Behavior tab of the Dock Properties dialog. When this setting is on, the dock will come forward when the associated edge is bumped but focus will be automatically given back to the window that previously had it if the user mouses away without clicking on it.
Dock resizing and drag & drop of items into and from the dock is now much smoother.
Cleaned up unused bitmaps in the resource file.
Icons were first appearing blank if they took too long to render.
It was not possible to select an individual tray icon in grouped mode using the Zoom effect.
The option in the General tab of Preferences to hide desktop icons wasn't doing anything.
Dock no longer 'lazy renders' icons (i.
Very large strips of animated icons no longer appear blank in the dock on 32 bit systems.
The Water mouseover effect could appear a little bit cropped at the bottom for top docks.
Fixed label overlapping dock icons for non-magnifying docks at the top of the screen when the 'Do not flip background...' setting was enabled.
Fixed error that could *potentially* crash the application if a file belonging to the group of files that display thumbnails no longer existed.
Fixed potential problem when dropping files into an empty dock with the 'Lock Icons' setting enabled.
It was not possible to duplicate a dock item via drag & drop if dropping the item right next to the source item.
If the dock popup delay on mouseover was set to 0 ms it was almost impossible to get to the System Tray hidden icons dialog after clicking the system tray expand button.
Added fail safe code to prevent situations where mouse click actions on running application items were all set to 'None'.

Nexus v11.5 complete change log:

Updated the German language file.
Updated Polish language file.
Updated Korean language file.
Updated Italian language file.
Updated Farsi language file.
Removed 'dead' bitmaps from resource file.
Most dock mouse over effects can now be combined with the magnify effect.
Split the Position & Behavior tab in Preferences into two tabs.
Re-arranged the Effects tab in Preferences.
Added a new 'Contents' tab to Preferences.
Moved 'Indicator Offset from Icon Reflection' to its own dialog box with preview.
Icon Spacing in the dock now has independent vertical and horizontal settings and was moved to its own dialog box with preview.
Dock transparency now has independent settings for icons and background and was moved to its own dialog box with preview.
Re-organized some settings in Preferences for a more logical layout.
Improved the bounce animation that occurs when launching an icon from the dock.
Docks now un-hide or un-collapse automatically if displaying a list of running tasks and one or more of the tasks start flashing to call attention.
Removed '@ Sign' Email Checker style, replaced it with default 'Envelope' style.
Removed Cartoon Fish style, replaced it with 'Fortune Cookie' style.
Removed the online cookie section from Wanda, since the only available fortune cookie server at the University of Upsala has been down for nearly two years and isn't likely to come back online again.
Removed the SSL option from the Email Checker settings since servers no longer support SSL v2.
Internal Commands in the Insert New Item menu are now shown categorized into Application, Desktop, Media, Disk, Misc, System and Shutdown sub-menus.
Added new 'Push' mouse over effect.
Groupped system tray icons in magnifying docks are now as sharp as the original icons when the dock item is not being magnified.
Replaced 'Bar Graph' Net, RAM and CPU meter styles with 'Gauge' style featuring a 'smooth meter' setting in the Performance Settings dialog.
Added setting to increase the system tray refresh rate from once per second to 16 times per second to the Performance Settings dialog in the Advanced tab of Preferences.
Added new 'Teleport' mouse over effect.
Re-organized the UI in order to place settings where they logically belong.
The Update Manager now displays a 'What's New' link whenever such information is available.
Added new high resolution images for the digital clock module and the NeXT style recycler.
Only document files can now be dragged into a shortcut in order to open it with the associated executable.
Applications are no longer 'ignored' if dragged straight into an icon, now being instead added to the dock. Previously the effect would be the same as launching the target shortcut with that application as an argument (which would simply result in launching the target shortcut), like it happens when you drop a document into a shortcut in the dock in order to open that document in that application.
The balloon tooltip can now be specified to appear in the following cases: Never, Always, Only for Modules, Only for Modules and Documents.
Decreased the size of the Wind mouseover effect, which was too big.
Monitors in multiple monitor systems are now sorted left to right (i.e.; first monitor is the leftmost monitor and the last monitor the rightmost). The primary monitor also has '(Primary Monitor)' added to the description.
Added new 'Safely Remove Hardware' internal command.
Added new 'Show physical network adapters only' setting to the Network Meter module, which is now enabled by default.
Re-organized Net Metter Settings panel.
Added built-in support for animated icons (i.e.; single PNG strips holding all the frames of an animation). Animated icons are recognized automatically and animation delay settings, etc, can be set in the Dock Entry Properties dialog.
The Weather system tray icon is now a full 128x128 image.
Font size in UI command buttons is now automatically reduce if the localized text does not fit.
Icon in the Version Information dialog had a dark gray background.
Opening native Winstep theme files from FireFox failed with an error.
Icon reflections for the Zoom mouseover effect where not being cropped properly.
The 'Keep this dock visible when pressing WIN+D' setting would always be checked after a re-start.
After beta 1 a magnifying dock with the persistent Flare/Afterglow mouseover effects could appear partially on screen after auto-hidding into the screen edge.
A magnifying dock could suddenly appear garbled if you quickly moved the mouse pointer back and forth over it.
Fixed automatic icon size problem that could sometimes occur when the dock was too large to fit on screen.
Single .ICO files displayed in the Icon Browser dialog appeared jagged.
Dock item separators were wrongly assuming the opacity of the dock background.
Fixed bug in beta 1 that prevented icons from flashing to call attention in the dock.
There wasn't enough padding for the dock Zoom effect, which would cause the icon to appear cropped when using a large magnitude for the effect.
It was possible to accidentaly drag a shortcut to itself instead of launching it, which would launch the shortcut but also cause it to disappear from a dock.
Fixed the date localization used for the clock and 'Lack Checked:' strings.
3rd party dock themes were not being applied properly when loaded from the right click menu.
The dock was sometimes leaving icon 'leftovers' at the left or top when de-magnifying.
Fixed re-positioning issue after dragging a floating dock.
Fixed dock tooltip positioning.
Fixed problem with the dock displaing the wrong right-click context menu with the zoom mouse over effect unless the icon was clicked dead center.
Setting a clock background image manually would lock the clock hand colors to red and black.
Selecting the first NIC Adapter from the 'Interface to Monitor' right click menu of the Net module was not working.

Archived News

Winstep Xtreme v23.11 Released! December 8, 2023: v23.11 adds per monitor taskbars and tasklists and mitigates Windows 11 22H2 changes and bugs, plus many new features and stability improvements!

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Nexus Dock v23.11 Released! December 8, 2023: v23.11 adds per monitor tasklists for docks and mitigates Windows 11 22H2 changes and bugs, plus many new features and stability improvements!

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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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Winstep

Software Technologies

Winstep News

Nexus Dock v11.6 Released!

July 6, 2011

What's New? Highlighted Features (v11.5 + v11.6):

Nexus v11.6 complete change log:

Nexus v11.5 complete change log:

Archived News

Winstep Xtreme v23.11 Released!

December 8, 2023

Nexus Dock v23.11 Released!

December 8, 2023

Cyber Monday!

November 27, 2023

Happy Holidays!

December 20, 2022

Winstep Xtreme v22.7 Released!

July 27, 2022

Nexus Dock v22.7 Released!

July 27, 2022

Happy Holidays 2021!

December 22, 2021

Happy Holidays!

December 20, 2020

Winstep Xtreme v20.10 Released!

October 28, 2020

Nexus Dock v20.10 Released!

October 28, 2020

Happy Holidays!

December 18, 2019

Winstep 20th Annniversary!

February 28, 2019

Winstep Xtreme v19.2 Released!

February 28, 2019

Nexus Dock v19.2 Released!

February 28, 2019

Happy Holidays!

December 17, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v18.12 Released!

December 17, 2018

Nexus Dock v18.12 Released!

December 17, 2018

Cyber Monday!

November 26, 2018

Black Friday!

November 23, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v18.10 Released!

October 9, 2018

Nexus Dock v18.10 Released!

October 9, 2018

Price Increase Announcement

October 7, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v18.8 Released!

August 30, 2018

Nexus Dock v18.8 Released!

August 30, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v18.5 Released!

June 1, 2018

Nexus Dock v18.5 Released!

June 1, 2018

Winstep and the EU GDPR

May 25, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v18.3 Released!

March 31, 2018

Nexus Dock v18.3 Released!

March 31, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v18.1 Released!

January 20, 2018

Nexus Dock v18.1 Released!

January 20, 2018

Winstep Xtreme v17.12 Released!

December 28, 2017

Nexus Dock v17.12 Released!

December 28, 2017

Happy Holidays!

December 22, 2017

Cyber Monday!

November 27, 2017

Winstep Xtreme v17.1 Released!