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Nexus Dock v18.1 Released!
January 20, 2018
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The Winstep Nexus dock is a FREE dock for Windows. Every feature you’d expect from a dock, including widgets, mouse-over effects, skins, drag-and-drop, and many others not available in most other docks, such as live icon reflections, in-dock system tray, blur-behind effects, and much more. Completely customizable, with thousands of different backgrounds freely available online, Nexus is fully compatible with skins for all 3rd party docks.
Nexus runs on the 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8.x and 10.
v18.1 was to be primarily a maintenance release to v17.12, but we just had to throw in a bunch of exciting new features as well, mainly in the look & feel department: besides a new cool slide-in effect for the tabs in Preferences, the whole User Interface can now be made to blend in perfectly with Windows 10 through the addition of two new Black and Gray UI dark modes.
The new release also features an important number of fixes related to the drag & drop background file copy operation introduced in v17.12, the Language Bar not working properly on Windows 10 after a recent Windows update, the recycle bin module not updating consistently, the Moon animation of the Moon Phases module overwhelming slower systems with high DPI settings enabled (Nexus Ultimate), modules on secondary monitors not updating when a full screen application is open in the primary monitor, and much more!
Nexus Ultimate 24.4
The Advanced Docking System for Windows
- Buy Now
$29.95
Thank you for your preference and for your help in making Nexus one of the best docks for Windows!- Fixed issue reporting the correct number of files in the Recycle Bin.
- New User Interface slide-in animation.
- New Dark Mode (Black) and Dark Mode (Gray) User Interface options.
- Fixed modules not updating on multi-monitor systems.
- Fixed bug where nothing would happen when dropping certain files to the dock or Shelf.
- New Windows 10 specific icons.
- Weather forecast in the Shelf is now shown in a sub-dock (Nexus Ultimate).
- Moon calendar animation could overwhelm slower systems (Nexus Ultimate).
- Fixed language bar not working correctly on Windows 10.
- Fixed broken monthly alarm setting.
- Many other performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...
- Maximum icon size has been changed from 255 to 256x256 pixels.
- Changes to the User Interface colors made in the About tab of Preferences can now be canceled.
- Using the Language Bar IC to change the locale of another window now also gives focus to the window.
- Added new optional 'Slide' animation to the User Interface. Can be toggled in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences.
- Added alternate User Interface modes to better blend with Windows 10: Dark Mode (Black), Dark Mode (Gray) and a bonus Winstep theme. Mode can be changed in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences.
- Added new white default icons to be used in Windows 10 for the Search, Windows Start Menu, Action Center and Task View internal commands.
- The Balloon tooltip now displays thumbnails of animated icon PNG strips as the first frame of the animation.
- If the Alarm is set to, say, fire on the 31st of every month, it will now skip over the months that don't have 31 days, instead of deactivating itself
- The new drag & drop background file copy operation would fail if one of the files had a comma in the filename.
- Fixed issue where the Recycle Bin image might not update after deleting several files on non-English versions of Windows.
- Fixed potential issues displaying the systray icons if the Windows systray was not accessible at startup.
- Fixed issue where audio might not stop playing after exiting the application.
- Modules/widgets on secondary monitors stopped updating when a full screen application was open. Although this was deliberate in order to use as little CPU as possible when a game is running, it should not happen if the module is on a monitor other than the one where the full screen application is running.
- Couple of User Interface images inside WsUIImageRes.DLL were accidentaly added with an opaque background.
- Under Windows 10 the Language Bar IC failed to change the current keyboard layout.
- Fixed issue that could cause a live preview thumbnail from a running application to flicker even when nothing apparently changed.
- Fixed animation issue in the Module preview tab with customized Email Checker animations.
- Light bulb image on the Tips of the Day dialog did not have a transparent background.
- The Monthly implementation of the Alarms was broken and often failed to correctly set the next activation date.
- Under Windows 10 'Flip Calendar' is now the default calendar style.
- The Shelf icon cache is now destroyed every time the 'Show document, image and video files as thumbnails' setting is changed by the user, so thumbnails are retrieved or destroyed as necessary.
- The Recycle Bin tab in the Shelf is now able to display thumbnails of deleted documents, images and video files.
- Maximum icon size has been changed from 255 to 256x256 pixels.
- Changes to the User Interface colors made in the About tab of Preferences can now be canceled.
- Using the Language Bar IC to change the locale of another window now also gives focus to the window.
- Clicking a Weather module icon in the Shelf now opens a Weather forecast dock.
- Added new optional 'Slide' animation to the User Interface. Can be toggled in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences.
- Added alternate User Interface modes to better blend with Windows 10: Dark Mode (Black), Dark Mode (Gray) and a bonus Winstep theme. Mode can be changed in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences.
- The 'Number of Recent Documents to display in a Recent Documents tab' field in the Contents tab of the Shelf Properties dialog can now be quickly set via a scroll button.
- Added new white default icons to be used in Windows 10 for the Search, Windows Start Menu, Action Center and Task View internal commands.
- The Balloon tooltip now displays thumbnails of animated icon PNG strips as the first frame of the animation.
- If the Alarm is set to, say, fire on the 31st of every month, it will now skip over the months that don't have 31 days, instead of deactivating itself
- Under very specific cases the Shelf could crash while generating thumbnails for folders when switching tabs very rapidly.
- The new drag & drop background file copy operation would fail if one of the files had a comma in the filename.
- Fixed issue where the Recycle Bin image might not update after deleting several files on non-English versions of Windows.
- When drag & dropping an item into a Regular tab in the Shelf, a 'ghost' icon with text could appear at the top left corner of the Shelf.
- The Recycle Bin tab in the Shelf was not automatically updating its contents when files were added or removed from it.
- Fixed potential issues displaying the systray icons if the Windows systray was not accessible at startup.
- Fixed issue where audio might not stop playing after exiting the application.
- Modules/widgets on secondary monitors stopped updating when a full screen application was open. Although this was deliberate in order to use as little CPU as possible when a game is running, it should not happen if the module is on a monitor other than the one where the full screen application is running.
- Couple of User Interface images inside WsUIImageRes.DLL were accidentaly added with an opaque background.
- Under Windows 10 the Language Bar IC failed to change the current keyboard layout.
- Fixed issue that could cause a live preview thumbnail from a running application to flicker even when nothing apparently changed.
- Fixed issue where a sub-dock could go behind the parent dock.
- Scroll wheel wasn't working properly in the System Tray Exclusion List dialog.
- Fixed animation issue in the Module preview tab with customized Email Checker animations.
- The Shelf could get confused about its collapsed/expanded state when clicking outside the Shelf Properties dialog and then quickly clicking the Shelf Properties dialog again while the collapse animation had already started.
- On slower systems with high DPI settings it was possible for the moon animation in the Moon Calendar dialog to completely bog down the application, making it unresponsive to key presses and mouse clicks.
- Fixed minor cosmetic problem with the position of the run time text on vertical battery modules due to a previous small change on how outline text is rendered.
- Light bulb image on the Tips of the Day dialog did not have a transparent background.
- The Monthly implementation of the Alarms was broken and often failed to correctly set the next activation date.
What's New? Highlighted Features:
One of the advantages of the Winstep Recycle Bin module over the Windows Recycle Bin is that it lets you know at a glance how many files are in it and how much disk space those files are currently using.
Actually retrieving the number of files and calculating how much disk space they are occupying can be a very disk intensive and time consuming operation if there are thousands of files in the Recycle Bin, which is why the module relies on system notifications to know when the information needs to be updated.
Unfortunately under certain circunstances the Recycle Bin module could fail to correctly update its state.
Just a little touch to make browsing Preferences a little bit more interesting. The new slide-in animation is enabled by default, but can be toggled in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences.
The two new modes are another step taken towards the integration of Winstep applications with the Windows 10 look (although nothing prevents you from using them in Windows 7 and below as well).
If running under Windows 10 and dark mode is enabled, the application will automatically switch to the Dark Mode (Black) look. Both Dark modes will automatically pick your current Accent color for certain elements of the interface.
You can switch to the standard light interface, or the less contrasting Dark Mode (Gray) look, in the More Options dialog of the General tab in Preferences.
Although the Windows 10 dark mode is great for Amoled displays and actually looks quite nice, the very high contrast can sometimes make it a bit too agressive to the eye. As such an alternative Dark Mode (Gray) version is also available:
And here is what the same tab in Preferences looks like using Dark Mode (Black):
When opening a full screen application on the primary monitor, modules on a dock placed on a secondary monitor would stop updating.
These days this is no longer true and the full screen application can even be a video playing on Youtube instead of a game. Now modules in docks only stop updating if the dock is actually on the same monitor as the full screen application.
The previous version added a feature where Drag & Drop file operations were now performed in the background, allowing the application to remain responsive even while large or multiple files were still being copied or moved.
Unfortunately the drag & drop operation would fail if any of the files being dropped contained a comma in the filename.
While still on the subject of matching Windows 10 on looks, the new version ships with four new 128x128 black & white icons for the Start Menu, Search, Action Center and Task View internal commands.
Previously clicking the Weather module icon on the Shelf would open a web page on your browser with detailed weather information. You can still access this page by right clicking on the module and selecting 'Detailed Weather Conditions'.
In order to adapt frame rates to the speed of a particular PC, the Winstep application calculates how long it takes on average to display a single frame of the moon animation and uses that number to enforce a maximum frame rate. This way slower machines should not get bogged down and the animation will still be as smooth as possible.
To smooth the animation even further, every 10 ms a 'transitional' frame is inserted into the animation, which is a simple rotation of the previous frame without the requirement to perform a gaussian blur of the moon shadow and therefore did not enter into the maximum frame rate cap calculation.
Turns out that if this is pretty much meaningless on high end systems at 100% DPI, on systems with high DPI enabled the size of the bitmaps can quadruple, which could bring slow machines to their knees and make it impossible to interrupt the moon animation. This is no longer allowed to happen.
Although meaningless to most users, the Language Bar internal command is a fundamental tool for those who need to switch between language inputs or keyboard layouts.
While on Windows 7 the Language Bar still worked properly, on Windows 10 one of the latest updates had broken its functionality.
Not only is this feature working again as using it to change the locale of another window now also gives focus back to that window.
The Monthly implementation of the Alarms was broken and often failed to correctly set the next activation date. In addition, if the Alarm is set to, say, fire on the 31st of every month, it will now skip over months that don't have 31 days instead of deactivating itself.
Nexus v18.1 complete change log:
Nexus Ultimate v18.1 complete change log:
Archived News
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Winstep Xtreme v23.11 Released!
December 8, 2023
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v23.11 adds per monitor taskbars and tasklists and mitigates Windows 11 22H2 changes and bugs, plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v23.11 Released!
December 8, 2023
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v23.11 adds per monitor tasklists for docks and mitigates Windows 11 22H2 changes and bugs, plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more -
Cyber Monday!
November 27, 2023
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Cyber Monday 2023 is here and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off for the next 24 hours. So, will you take the final chance to bag a deal?
Read more -
Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2022
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v22.7 Released!
July 27, 2022
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v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v22.7 Released!
July 27, 2022
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v22.7 brings FULL compatibility with Windows 11 plus many new features and stability improvements!
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Happy Holidays 2021!
December 22, 2021
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Once again and still in difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!
Read more -
Happy Holidays!
December 20, 2020
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In this difficult times, wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Stay safe!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v20.10 Released!
October 28, 2020
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v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v20.10 Released!
October 28, 2020
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v20.10 brings many new features and stability improvements, increased compatibility with Windows 10 and much more!
Read more -
Happy Holidays!
December 18, 2019
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Read more -
Winstep 20th Annniversary!
February 28, 2019
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Winstep is celebrating 20 years in business with a fantastic, time-limited, price reduction all across the board! Enjoy it while it lasts!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v19.2 Released!
February 28, 2019
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v19.2 is mainly a maintenance release with a few goodies thrown in such as a matching Windows 10 Light Mode and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v19.2 Released!
February 28, 2019
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v19.2 is mostly a maintenance release with a few goodies thrown in such as a matching Windows 10 Light Mode and much more!
Read more -
Happy Holidays!
December 17, 2018
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v18.12 Released!
December 17, 2018
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Just in time for Christmas, v18.12 is a massive release featuring the new Grid Stacks, Search Filters, multi monitor profiles and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v18.12 Released!
December 17, 2018
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Just in time for Christmas, v18.12 is a massive release featuring the new Grid Stacks and Search Filters (Nexus Ultimate), multi monitor profiles and much more!
Read more -
Cyber Monday!
November 26, 2018
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Cyber Monday 2018 is here and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off for the next 24 hours. So, will you take the final chance to bag a deal?
Read more -
Black Friday!
November 23, 2018
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Black Friday 2018 is upon us and Nexus Ultimate is 40% off.
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v18.10 Released!
October 9, 2018
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Icon colorization, center icons in Shelves, Drawer resizing, improved handling of hybrid Win32/UWP apps, menu scaling and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v18.10 Released!
October 9, 2018
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Icon colorization, improved handling of hybrid Win32/UWP apps, context menu scaling and much more!
Read more -
Price Increase Announcement
October 7, 2018
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After nearly 20 years providing the best products at competitive prices, Winstep is increasing the prices of all its applications for the first time - just to make up (barely) for inflation.
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v18.8 Released!
August 30, 2018
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Major release featuring the new Drawers, support for multiple and vertical Shelves and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v18.8 Released!
August 30, 2018
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Major release featuring new colorization options, new Drawers and support for multiple and vertical Shelves (Nexus Ultimate) and much more!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v18.5 Released!
June 1, 2018
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Major release featuring the ability to access docks directly from NextSTART, new Delete Effect with 22 different animations, alarm overlays and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v18.5 Released!
June 1, 2018
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Major release featuring new Delete Effect with many different animations, enhanced Media Player functionality and playlist handling, alarm overlays and much more!
Read more -
Winstep and the EU GDPR
May 25, 2018
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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a legal framework that sets guidelines for the collection and processing of personal information of individuals within the European Union (EU).
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v18.3 Released!
March 31, 2018
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Major release with new alarm options, power saving modes and media player internal command, plus many other performance and stability improvements!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v18.3 Released!
March 31, 2018
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New alarm options, full dock keyboard support, power saving modes and media player internal command, plus many other performance and stability improvements!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v18.1 Released!
January 20, 2018
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New optional Dark Mode for the User Interface, new Windows 10 icons, many other performance and stability improvements!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v18.1 Released!
January 20, 2018
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New optional Dark Mode for the User Interface, new Windows 10 icons, many other performance and stability improvements!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v17.12 Released!
December 28, 2017
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A bit late for Christmas but still not too late, v17.2 is here. Many Windows 10 related additions and fixes and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v17.12 Released!
December 28, 2017
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A bit late for Christmas but still not too late, v17.2 is here. Many Windows 10 related additions and fixes and much more!
Read more -
Happy Holidays!
December 22, 2017
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Read more -
Cyber Monday!
November 27, 2017
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Cyber Monday 2017 is upon us and Winstep Xtreme is 50% off.
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v17.1 Released!
January 27, 2017
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New moon module, new sub-dock options, smooth Shelf scrolling and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v17.1 Released!
January 27, 2017
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Wallpaper hot-track smooth colorization transitions, new moon module and pop-up calendar (Nexus Ultimate), and much more!
Read more -
Happy Holidays!
December 23, 2016
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Wishing everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v16.12 Released!
December 8, 2016
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New calendar module, high-quality voice packs in multiple languages, and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v16.12 Released!
December 8, 2016
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High-quality voice packs in multiple languages, Email Checker module now displays number of unread messages on the icon itself, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.9 Released!
September 30, 2016
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v16.9 is is mostly a maintenance release, fixing some issues in the previous version and restoring the NOOA/METAR Weather feed.
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Nexus Dock v16.9 Released!
September 30, 2016
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v16.9 is is mostly a maintenance release, fixing some issues in the previous version and restoring the NOOA/METAR Weather feed..
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Winstep Xtreme v16.6 Released!
June 27, 2016
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New Fast Boot option, running Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10 now display the proper icon and can be pinned to docks and the taskbar, and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v16.6 Released!
June 27, 2016
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New Fast Boot option, running Universal Windows Apps in Windows 10 now display the proper icon and can be pinned to the dock, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.5 Released!
May 28, 2016
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NextSTART taskbar high-DPI support, new colorization options and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v16.5 Released!
May 28, 2016
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New colorization options, fixed 3D dock backgrounds distortion at certain icon sizes, and much more!
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Winstep Xtreme v16.3 Released!
March 10, 2016
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Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.
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Nexus Dock v16.3 Released!
March 10, 2016
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Maintenance release fixing all the issues we know of in v16.2.
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Winstep Xtreme v16.2 Released!
February 11, 2016
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New battery module, clock alarms, 10 amazing new mouse-over, launch and attention effects and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v16.2 Released!
February 11, 2016
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Minimize windows to the dock, new internal commands, performance improvements and much more in this release!
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Winstep Xtreme v15.9 Released!
September 29, 2015
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High DPI compatibility, Language Bar, Weather module Geo location, better Windows 10 integration and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v15.9 Released!
September 29, 2015
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High DPI compatibility, combined dock shortcuts with running applications, Weather module Geo location, better Windows 10 integration and much more in this release!
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Winstep Xtreme v15.7 Released!
July 27, 2015
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Winstep Xtreme is now 100% compatible with Windows 10 and much more in this new release!
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Nexus Dock v15.7 Released!
July 27, 2015
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Nexus is now 100% compatible with Windows 10 and much more in this new release!
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Windows 10 and Winstep applications
June 27, 2015
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With Windows 10 just around the corner, many users have been wondering if Winstep applications (Nexus, Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme) will work correctly with it.
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Winstep Xtreme v14.11 Released!
November 7, 2014
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Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!
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Nexus Dock v14.11 Released!
November 7, 2014
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Restored weather feed for weather forecast and more in this maintenance release!
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Take back what is yours!
March 23, 2012
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In an effort to force you into using Metro, Microsoft stripped the familiar Start Menu out of Windows 8. In the process it also stripped your ability to chose for yourself what is best for you.
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v12.2 Released!
March 22, 2012
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This is a monster release, click the Read More link below for a guided tour on what's new!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v12.2 Released!
March 22, 2012
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This is a monster release, click the Read More link below for a guided tour on what's new!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v11.10 Released!
November 18, 2011
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Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, new Tray tab in Preferences, and more...
Read more -
Nexus Dock v11.10 Released!
November 18, 2011
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Weather module working again, new Launch and Attention effects, and more...
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Weather feed down!
November 6, 2011
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Weather module not working? Find out why and what is being done about it.
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Winstep Xtreme v11.6 Released!
July 6, 2011
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Maintenance release of Winstep Xtreme.
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Nexus Dock v11.6 Released!
July 6, 2011
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Maintenance release of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate.
Read more -
New Winstep Theme: DarkTech
June 24, 2011
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Brought to you by the Winstep design team - more in-house themes currently in the pipeline.
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v11.5 Released!
June 23, 2011
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System tray icon customization, ability to mix mouseover effects, support for animated icons, and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v11.5 Released!
June 20, 2011
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Dock mouseover effects can now be combined with magnify effect, support for animated icons, and much more!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v11.2 Released!
March 14, 2011
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New release featuring increased support for Microsoft's High DPI virtualization technology, and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v11.2 Released!
March 14, 2011
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New release featuring increased support for backgrounds of 3rd party docks, preserving aspect ratio of image thumbnails, and much more!
Read more -
Start Menu Organizer v1.5 Released!
March 14, 2011
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New release adding more languages and increasing compatibility with 64 bit versions of Windows!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v10.9 Released!
October 14, 2010
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Major release featuring nine new incredible dock mouseover effects, five new menu opening animations, Windows 7 "Superbar" ability with window previews and aeropeek capability on docks, horizontal sub-docks, and much more!
Read more -
Nexus Dock v10.9 Released!
October 8, 2010
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Major release featuring nine new incredible dock mouseover effects, Windows 7 "Superbar" ability with window previews and aeropeek capability, and much more!
Read more -
Nexus featured at Download.com!
October 8, 2010
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Nexus featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com!
Read more -
Start Menu Organizer v1.4 Released!
August 9, 2010
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Version 1.4 fixes an issue in which the Pro version of the program could stop when expanding the Administrative Tools group and adds support for 23 languages.
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme featured at Download.com!
July 18, 2010
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Winstep Xtreme has been featured on the front page of Cnet's Download.com, not once, but twice!
Read more -
Winstep Xtreme v10.6 Final Released!
July 13, 2010
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Roughly 1 year in the making, the official upgrade to Winstep Xtreme v9.5 is finally here!
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Nexus Dock v10.6 Released!
July 13, 2010
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Maintenance release of our free popular Winstep Nexus dock.
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Winstep announces strategic alliance with Proxma AG!
July 13, 2010
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Proxma AG will market Winstep products in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Read more -
Start Menu Organizer v1.3 Released!
July 2, 2010
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New version of the Winstep Start Menu Organizer featuring support for even more languages.
Read more -
Welcome to our new web site!
June 15, 2010
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The Winstep web site gets a brand new face to match the quality of our products.
Read more