What's New? Highlighted Features:

• Speed! Due to new and improved activation and hide delay timings, Nexus simply feels a lot more responsive. Rendering performance when shifting icons in a fully expanded Shelf to make room for a new shortcut is now also an order of magnitude faster.





• Improved Windows 10 integration.
• Now fully high-DPI aware. Throw anything at it from 100% to 200% scaling and everything will still work and look as it should. New settings added to control the scaling of menus and the Shelf on high DPI systems.
• Added support for systems with multiple input languages: new 'Language Bar' internal command can be placed anywhere and emulates the functionality of the Windows language bar.





• New optional Edge Swipe activation mechanism.
• Shortcuts in the dock now double up as running application icons, so there is no duplication of icons when running applications are being displayed in the dock.



• Shelf now smoothly resizes when double clicking a tab header to fully expand the Shelf in order to show all the contents of that tab at once.
• Smooth transitions when moving, adding or removing NextSTART taskbar buttons.
• Weather module now automatically retrieves the user's location when running for the first time. Also added new 'Get My Location' button in the Weather settings panel.





• New 'Fly In' menu animation as well as improvements to existing menu open animations.
• New Smoke mouseover/launch/attention effect. Not too intrusive and makes the dock look like it's on fire! My new personal favorite when combined with the magnify effect.



• Added support for RKLauncher dock skins.
• Added option to automatically hide (Fade out) WorkShelf's desktop modules at startup.
• New option to colorize themes based on the dominant color of the current desktop background.



• Explosion animation shown when an item is deleted or removed is now user-customizable.
• New optional Windows 10 style for some UI elements, specifically designed so the application blends in with the new Windows version. Automatically enabled on Windows 10 systems.



• New 'Most Used' Shelf tab and menu types to display a list of your most used applications.
• Added new 'Action Center' internal command (Windows 10 only).
• Clicking the clock module or the clock button on the taskbar now shows the Windows calendar instead of the Regional Settings dialog (Windows 7 onwards).
• Size of the Quick Launch area in the NextSTART taskbar can now be automatically limited to a percentage of the available size.



• Font size in the User Interface is now automatically decreased when a non-English language is selected to better accomodate the (usually) longer translations.
• ... many other performance and stability improvements! Please see complete change log below...

WorkShelf v15.9 complete change log:

• Updated the Portuguese language file.
• Updated the French language file.
• Updated the Indonesian language file.
• Added new 'Action Center' internal command (Windows 10 only).
• The image of disabled docks & shelves now appear in grayscale on the Docks & Shelves tab of Preferences.
• Added 'Show folder in a menu' setting to folder type items in the Item Properties Editor, so shortcuts to folders can be browsed in a menu when clicked on an individual base.
• Auto-Hide delay has been extended from 100 ms to 5,000 ms in 100 ms intervals.
• Docks and Shelf no longer auto-hide while mouse pointer remains at the edge bump location.
• Edge bump delay now ranges from 0 to 2,000ms in 100 ms intervals.
• Added new 'Smoke' mouseover effect.
• Changed the hue of the live preview thumbnail glass background, to better fit with the Windows original.
• When installing a full setup version over an existing version, the user is no longer prompted to overwrite the default theme files.
• Reduced the font size used to display the theme's author in the Theme Preview window.
• Pressing CTRL while left clicking a shortcut now cycles through all the windows belonging to that same application when 'do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' is enabled.
• Pressing CTRL+SHIFT while clicking a shortcut causes the application to launch with Admin rights.
• Clicking the clock module now opens the Windows calendar instead of showing the Regional Settings dialog.
• The images of disabled docks in the Dock & Shelves tab of Preferences now appear in gray scale to help reinforce the fact that they are disabled.
• Added 'Language Bar' internal command, which emulates the functionality of the Windows Language Bar. It changes dynamically, showing the active keyboard layout in the current foreground window, and allows switching to other keyboard layouts through a menu displaying all available language and keyboard layouts.
• Tray icon customization is now disabled by default to save resources.
• Double clicking a shortcut now launches a new session when 'Do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' is enabled.
• Added 'Always at the base of the icon' setting to the running indicator offset dialog. This forces the running indicator to always be shown below the icon independently of the current dock orientation.
• By default the running indicator is now 'Always at the base of the icon' and the indicator offset set to 30%.
• The Shelf now smoothly resizes when double clicking a Shelf tab to fully expand it or return it to the default number of rows, instead of changing sizes instantaneously.
• Renamed the 'WinstepXtreme.exe' multi-function helper application to 'Winstep.exe' to avoid confusing users of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate.
• Added multi-language support to the 'Winstep Key Manager' helper application.
• Added an optional new style to some UI elements (windows live preview thumbnail backgrounds, menu document thumbnail backgrounds, ballon tooltip background and the 'working' splash screen) to better fit with the default Windows 8 and Windows 10 look. Enabled by default on Windows 10 and 8.
• Added option in the More Options dialog of the General Preferences tab to enable the new Windows 10 style even when not running under Windows 10 or 8.
• Menu Slide, Grow and Explode opening animations no longer have linear acceleration, making them much more pleasing to the eye.
• Added 'Colorize with the dominant color of the desktop background'/'Wallpaper hot-track' setting to the colorization options of all objects, which automatically colorizes them to 'blend in' with the current desktop wallpaper.
• Added colorization settings to the Appearance tab of the Shelf Properties panel.
• The Explosion animation displayed when items are deleted can now be customized in the More Options dialog of General Preferences. User must specify a multi-frame PNG or TIF animation strip (animated icon).
• Moved the icon reflection and icon drop shaddow context menu options from the Effects menu to the Appearance and Sounds menu.
• Improved the appearance of the Aero style balloon tooltip.
• Improved the appearance of the Aero Style 'busy' splash window.
• Added a 'Edge Bump Settings' button to the General tab of Preferences.
• Added ability to activate docks and the Shelf via 'edge swipes' instead of 'edge bumps'.
• Added a new dialog to control edge swipe timings.
• Added a new setting to limit the distance the mouse pointer can travel during the activation delay for screen edge bumps. If the pointer moves behind this threashold while waiting to trigger an edge bump, the bump is discarded/ignored. This should help reduce accidental edge bump activations.
• Docks are now moved up in the z-order when mousing over them (if 'pop up on mouseover' is enabled) instead of removing focus from the currently active window. This provides a smoother experience since the active window does not change state.
• Added a 'Edge Swipe Settings' button the the General tab of Preferences and Dock Behavior panels.
• Added new 'Most Used' tab type which displays the user's most frequently used applications.
• Added a 'Clear Recent Documents' internal command as the first item of a Recent Documents tab.
• Dock icons can now be combined with running application icons in the dock so there is no duplication of icons.
• By default clicking on a grouped running application icon now shows live window preview thumbnails instead of the group menu.
• Added option to show the group menu when clicking on the icon of grouped running applications instead of showing the live preview thumbnails.
• Added support for RK Launcher's Theme.conf skins.
• Theme tabs in Preferences now open immediately instead of waiting for theme files to be retrieved.
• Animation speed in the General tab of Preferences can now be set in 50 ms intervals.
• Added a default running indicator bitmap.
• The Windows hidden notification icons window is now monitored when open and automatically repositioned if it suddenly'jumps' to another location on the screen (as happened if the mouse pointer hovered over an invalid notification icon).
• The Shelf Tab Properties dialog now automatically gives a new tab an appropriate default name according to the currently selected tab type.
• Added option to auto-hide (fade out) desktop modules at startup.
• Added option not to show icon reflections on vertical sub-docks.
• Added warning for Windows 8/10 users regarding the Glass Blur effect requiring the AeroGlass 3rd party utility.
• Added full support for high-DPI displays.
• Added option to automatically scale menus up on high DPI displays or not, as well as text in the Shelf.
• Icon shift routine in the Shelf is now an order of magnitude faster, which is especially noticeable when working with large, fully expanded, Shelf tabs.
• The tooltip for the 'Check for Updates' internal command now also displays when the next check will be.
• The existence of customized module background images is now cached so the hard disk where the modules themes are stored is not hammered with file exist queries.
• The Weather Module now automatically tries to retrieve the user's current location based on IP address when running for the first time.
• Added 'Get My Location' button to the Weather Module Preferences screen, which tries to get the user's current location (country, state, city, etc...) based on his IP address.
• Google killed their weather API, but weather forecasts for locations that do not have a Weather.com code (i.e.; only have a METAR code) can now be retrieved via MSN Weather.
• Changed defaults to: show running indicator on docks, running indicator offset at 30%, do not launch multiple instances, disable system tray icon customization and don't show icon reflections on vertical docks. When running under Windows 10: dock icon label background, outline and colorize according to dominant color of dock background are on, dock control icon color is Black Metal, UI base color is gray.
• Size of the UI font is now automatically reduced from point 10 to point 9 whenever a language other than English is selected to try and make up for the fact that translations from English are usually longer than the original text.
• Optimized the UI to try and prevent unchecked translations from over-running the available space.
• With the 'Do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' setting on, the dock was unable to restore minimized windows of applications running with elevated privileges.
• The 'Search' internal command was not working on Windows 8/10.
• A Check for Updates was always performed every time the application started even if 'Notify me when new updates are available' was turned off.
• It was not possible to set the windows of folder type items to open maximized or minimized.
• With the 'Do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' setting on, launching a new instance of the application required a SHIFT + left click. This however caused the new window not to appear on the foreground because of Explorer enforced restrictions. To work-around this the new instance of the application is only launched when the user releases the Shift key.
• Pressing Cancel in Preferences after applying a new theme would not restore the previous wallpaper (unless it was also the wallpaper used by the previous theme) if NextSTART was also running.
• Fixed catastrophic bug that could cause multiple instances of WinstepXtreme.exe to run at the same time, maxing out the CPU, if the SHQueryRecycleBin function failed unexpectadly on a target system.
• The Shelf could sometimes enter drag & drop mode immediately after launching an application.
• With the 'Do not launch multiple sessions of the same application' setting on, the Shelf was still launching a new session if the item pointed to a shortcut instead of the executable itself.
• Fixes instances where the shelf would appear to 'jerk' when being resized (e.g. when expanding via a double click on a tab).
• The 'Colorize dock background' setting for individual docks wasn't sticking unless the tint color was applied globably from the main Themes tab in Preferences.
• Document thumbnails were sometimes not being displayed with the correct size (IEIFLAG_QUALITY was not being specified and the requested size would be ignored if the document had an embedded thumbnail).
• Thumbnails of PNG and TIF images did not maintain the original proportion when displayed next to a menu.
• Dock preview would not colorize for native Winstep themes when browsing Nexus themes via the Dock's Properties panel.
• When uninstalling a dead shortcut could be left behind in the 'Send To' folder.
• Fixed issue that would cause menus to close and open again on a second click instead of simply closing if already open.
• Fixed bug that could cause the dock to become stuck in an endless loop when de-magnifying.
• Stopped including the dock transparent areas in the calculations of the auto-hide/expand slide animation, which makes the dock seem to react much faster now.
• Dock no longer needs to complete the hiding animation before responding to an edge bump/slide.
• Fixed issue where tooltip of a single live preview thumbnail might not always be displayed.
• The 64 bit versions of equivalent 32 bit applications are now launched correctly instead of always launching the 32 bit version.
• Fixed annoying issue where the first mouse click on Preferences was ignored if Preferences wasn't the currently active window.
• Title of Wanda Settings window was 'Show cookie for' instead of 'Wanda Settings'.
• It wasn't possible to set the secondary 'World' Email Checker style.
• Icon groups for system tray customization would sometimes 'break' into more than one group.
• The time in 24 hours format is now centered on the digital clock module.
• Fixed incorrect detection of 'Show Desktop' (WIN+D) being active when the user clicked on the desktop, which could cause various occasional z-order problems.
• System tray icons belonging to Session 0 processes were being saved with an empty process name in the tray icon cache.
• Corrected keyboard navigation tab order in the various UI configuration panels.
• Clicking the Start Menu Internal Command now properly closes the Start Menu if it is currently open and opens it otherwise.
• Using Aero Peek from a live thumbnail preview in a minimized Windows 10 App window caused that window to self-destruct.
• Minimized Metro App windows in Windows 10 disappearead from the tasklist.
• The Recent Documents tab was also showing non-document items under Windows 10.
• Fixed some issues with the description of Weather conditions being reported as 'N/A' in non-English languages.

NextSTART v15.9 complete change log:

• Updated the Portuguese language file.
• Updated the French language file.
• Updated the Indonesian language file.
• Added default 'Search' icon to the default Quick Launch area in the taskbar (Windows 8/10).
• Added new 'Action Center' internal command (Windows 10 only).
• Added default 'Action Center' icon to the default Quick Launch area in the taskbar (Windows 10).
• Tasklist buttons now fade out as the associated window is closed and other buttons smoothly slide in to fill its place.
• Added better visual feedback when re-organizing the order of tasklist buttons, with buttons shifting smoothly to make room for the button being moved.
• Changed the hue of the live preview thumbnail glass background, to better fit with the Windows original.
• Improved smoothness of switching between live preview thumbnails on the taskbar.
• When installing a full setup version over an existing version, the user is no longer prompted to overwrite the default theme files.
• Reduced the font size used to display the theme's author in the Theme Preview window.
• Pressing CTRL+SHIFT while clicking a shortcut/tasklist button causes the application to launch with Admin rights.
• Left-Clicking the systray clock button now shows the Windows calendar. Collapsing the systray has been changed to SHIFT+Left Clicking.
• Added 'Language Bar' internal command, which emulates the functionality of the Windows Language Bar. It changes dynamically, showing the active keyboard layout in the current foreground window, and allows switching to other keyboard layouts through a menu displaying all available language and keyboard layouts.
• When being run for the first time, NextSTART now adds a Language Bar icon to the Quick Launch area of the taskbar if there is more than one language/keyboard layout available for applications.
• Tray icon customization is now disabled by default to save resources.
• Added better visual feedback to re-organizing and adding items in the quick launch area of the taskbar.
• Icons in the Quick Launch area of the taskbar now glow on mouseover when dragging image files over them to customize an item's icon.
• Virtual or Physical file system items in the Quick Launch area of the taskbar can now be dragged and dropped into other applications.
• Renamed the 'WinstepXtreme.exe' multi-function helper application to 'Winstep.exe' to avoid confusing users of Nexus and Nexus Ultimate.
• Added multi-language support to the 'Winstep Key Manager' helper application.
• Added an optional new style to some UI elements (windows live preview thumbnail backgrounds, menu document thumbnail backgrounds and the 'working' splash screen) to better fit with the default Windows 8 and Windows 10 look. Enabled by default on Windows 10 and 8.
• Menu Slide, Grow and Explode opening animations no longer have linear acceleration, making them much more pleasing to the eye.
• Improved the appearance of the Aero Style 'busy' splash window.
• Added 'Bring taskbar forward when the mouse pointer bumps screen edge' setting to the Taskbar Advanced Settings dialog to control if the taskbar is given focus when the mouse pointer bumps the associated screen edge.
• Added 'Colorize with the dominant color of the desktop background'/'Wallpaper hot-track' setting to the colorization options of all objects, which automatically colorizes them to 'blend in' with the current desktop wallpaper.
• Added new 'Frequent Programs' menu type which displays the user's most frequently used applications.
• Added new 'Fly In' menu animation.
• Icons dropped into the Quick Launch section of the taskbar now slide smoothly into place.
• The taskbar will now only resort to using a minimum of two task list icon rows if the space needed to accomodate the largest element is larger than one and a half task rows.
• Changed some settings related to the size of Quick Launch buttons in the taskbar and to fixed width Task list buttons when icon labels are not displayed.
• The space used by the Quick Launch icons in the taskbar can now be automatically limited, either by showing an Expand button or by automatically reducing the size of Quick Launch icons. Maximum space used by the Quick Launch area is customizable as a percentage of the total taskbar size.
• The Windows hidden notification icons window is now monitored when open and automatically repositioned if it suddenly'jumps' to another location on the screen (as happened if the mouse pointer hovered over an invalid notification icon).
• Added warning for Windows 8/10 users regarding the Glass Blur effect requiring the AeroGlass 3rd party utility.
• NextSTART now behaves like the Windows taskbar when set to hide into the screen edge (now the default setting too): does not reserve screen space and is always on top of other windows when auto hide is on.
• Added full support for high-DPI displays.
• Added option to automatically scale menus up on high DPI displays or not.
• Added new 'MenuUseGrayIcons' theme option to make the theme display gray scale icons until the item is selected.
• When a sub-menu is open the selection bar in the parent menu now automatically returns to the sub-menu entry as soon as the mouse pointer leaves the menu.
• Pressing SHIFT + Left Mouse button on a tasklist button now launches a new instance of that application.
• Pressing CTRL + Left Mouse button on a tasklist button now cycles through that application's windows.
• Left clicking a tasklist button now opens/closes the live thumbnail previews. Old behavior of opening the groups menu can still be restored in the Advanced dialog of the Tasklist settings panel.
• Size of the UI font is now automatically reduced from point 10 to point 9 whenever a language other than English is selected to try and make up for the fact that translations from English are usually longer than the original text.
• Optimized the UI to try and prevent unchecked translations from over-running the available space.
• The 'Search' internal command was not working on Windows 8/10
• A Check for Updates was always performed every time the application started even if 'Notify me when new updates are available' was turned off.
• Scroll arrows pointed in the wrong direction if the tasklist was vertical.
• Document thumbnails were sometimes not being displayed with the correct size (IEIFLAG_QUALITY was not being specified and the requested size would be ignored if the document had an embedded thumbnail).
• Thumbnails of PNG and TIF images did not maintain the original proportion.
• Vertical text on vertical menu endcaps was broken.
• Fixed issue where tooltip of a single live preview thumbnail might not always be displayed.
• The Quick Launch section in the taskbar was not accepting items dragged from the Windows Start Menu.
• Fixed bug that could cause new items dropped into the Quick Launch area to be ignored.
• The 64 bit versions of equivalent 32 bit applications are now launched correctly instead of always launching the 32 bit version.
• Fixed annoying issue where the first mouse click on Preferences was ignored if Preferences wasn't the currently active window.
• Reseting Settings Only in the NextSTART Troubleshooting dialog was also resetting hotspots.
• Fixed incorrect detection of 'Show Desktop' (WIN+D) being active when the user clicked on the desktop, which could cause various occasional z-order problems.
• System tray icons belonging to Session 0 processes were being saved with an empty process name in the tray icon cache.
• Corrected keyboard navigation tab order in the various UI configuration panels.
• Clicking the Start Menu Internal Command now properly closes the Start Menu if it is currently open and opens it otherwise.
• Using Aero Peek from a live thumbnail preview in a minimized Windows 10 App window caused that window to self-destruct.
• Minimized Metro App windows in Windows 10 disappearead from the tasklist.
• The Recent Documents menu was also showing non-document items under Windows 10.