Beta releases of NextSTART 2.81 and WorkShelf 1.1 are available to *REGISTERED* NextSTART and/or Workshelf users as of December 21st and serve as a "Technology Preview".
All registered users interested in receiving this release must subscribe to our WINSTEP BETA TESTER'S MAILING LIST ( http://www.egroups.com/subscribe/WS2K-Beta ). Access will be granted upon approval, and for quick access it is suggested you fill out your user profile entirely so you can be easily identified as a registered user.
Subscriptions are carefully filtered, so if you are NOT a registered NextSTART or WorkShelf user please do NOT subscribe - you will just be wasting your time as well as ours.
Once access is granted, you will receive an automatic message telling you where you can download the beta preview from. To install, exit NextSTART and WorkShelf, unzip the file and run Setup.exe. Setup will automatically create a backup copy of all the replaced files and install the new beta versions.
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What's new in NextSTART 2.81 beta?
Added: Pressing CTRL+SHIFT+middle click/left click on a tasklist tile will close that and all related applications (useful if you want to close all Internet Explorer windows at once, for instance).
Added: 'Clear Recent Documents' Internal Command.
Added: Middle click support for two button mice - just press a shift key while you left click on a menu's titlebar and NextSTART will treat it as a middle click. Same with the tasklist.
Added: To help prevent accidentally dragging the tasklist, it now only enters 'drag' mode if it is moved more than 6 pixels at a time.
Added: 'Lock Tasklist and Systray' option to the Tasklist & Systray Preferences tab. When selected it locks the tasklist and systray into position, preventing them from being dragged with the mouse.
Fixed: Incompatibility between NextSTART and the XP VDM.
Fixed: The NextSTART control window should no longer appear with ANY VDM.
Fixed: The Recent Documents menu would always be empty under WinXP.
Fixed: When dragging an item over a tile on the tasklist to bring a target window to the foreground, the tasklist would start behaving like if it was being dragged itself.
Fixed: The tasklist tooltip was no longer display changing windows captions (as when a caption reflects % of bytes downloaded, for instance).
Added: Systray button is now draggable.
Added: NextSTART Tasklist is now draggable.
Fixed: Hotspot buttons now automatically revert to their proper screen location if they are shifted when reserving screen space.
Fixed: Strange character that preceeded menu items if menus were set to have folders appearing at the bottom instead of at the top.
Fixed: The new 'Quick Launch' special folder was not available in the Hotspots tab.
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What's new in WorkShelf 1.1 beta?
Added: The shelf can now be moved around when floating by dragging on the right mini-tab as well.
Added: Hotkey in Global Preferences tab to invoke WS Preferences with the keyboard.
Added: 'Clear Recent Documents' Internal Command.
Fixed: Dragging an item over a tab that was not the currently active one when the shelf was collapsed, would make WS uncollapse that shelf only partially.
Fixed: The Recent Documents shelf type would always be empty under WinXP.
Added: The shelf and desktop modules now automatically revert to their proper screen location if they are shifted when NextSTART reserves screen space.
Fixed: WS would crash if running the Restore and Backup internal commands while the sticky shelf option was enabled and associated to a timer.
Added: 'Click-Through' option for desktop modules. This allows users to click through the clock or recycler desktop modules to the application that lies beneath. This feature is only available for W2k/XP users and alpha-transparency must be set to something other than 'None' for it to work. Be aware that if you enable this option ALL mouse events will be passed through to the application beneath. This means that you cannot drag the module, right click it, get a mouse over tooltip or bring it to the foreground (so it's always a good idea to set the module to be 'Always On Top').
Added: Optional 'Sticky Shelf' into Global Preferences tab. Users can now define a sticky shelf which is automatically switched into after a specified number of seconds have elapsed or just after launching a program through WS. This is useful if, say, you want the tasks tab to be visible most of the time without having to worry about clicking on it.
Changed: Alpha Transparency in modules is now a per-user option, not a theme option.
Changed: Moved the module settings button to the top of the Alpha Transparency slider box - prevents it from being confused as settings for Alpha Transparency only.
Changed: Removed the graphical method in the Global Preferences tab of specifying if a shelf should be docked or inverted and replaced it with 2 check boxes.
Changed: Default Recycler bin style has been changed to 'Recycle Bin'.
Fixed: The option to prevent WorkShelf from showing launch errors was broken.
Fixed: WS wasn't saving the inverted bitmaps.
Fixed: Dragging files into sub-folders was not working properly.
Fixed: Dragging folders into folders in the shelf was not working properly.
Added: Bitmap options for inverted shelves. Skinners can now make bitmaps that are used when the shelf is inverted by adding an 'F' to the end of the bitmap name, over-riding the automatic invertion performed by WorkShelf.
Added: The tasklist shelf now uses the same user defined icon settings as NextSTART.
Added: When right-click dragging an item to a shelf, you now get a context menu that allows you to choose between moving, copying, or creating a shortcut in the target folder/shelf.
Fixed: It was only possible to move or drop icons into the first icon row.
Fixed: When dropping files into a folder on a *regular* shelf, the files would NOT be copied nor moved into the folder. This operation
would only work if moving files into folders not on regular shelves (e.g. the desktop shelf, etc...).
Fixed: WS would always perform a COPY operation when dropping files into folders on non-regular shelves even if the SHIFT key (signaling a move operation) was being pressed.
Fixed: Dropping files into *shortcuts* to folders on special shelves was not working.
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Enjoy!
