I have poor vision and must use a high constrast colour scheme with white text on black backgrounds. Applications that ignore the user's colour scheme and their own colours are entirely unreadable to the disabled.

Stardock has gradually been hard-coding white backgrounds into all their programs. It's short-sighted and it's terrible and lazy UI design. System colours are easily requested by any application. There is no need to hard-code white backgrounds other than to be lazy.

You buy them for that, not me. So let me get this straight: Because a serious issue doesn't affect you, it apparently doesn't affect anyone else?

I have bought Stardock programs because they have allowed me to customize Windows' terrible UI into one that's readable to a person with poor vision. If I cannot even read the interface of Stardock's own programs, how am I going to utilize them to customize my UI?

I fail to see how that is relevent when, in its current state, it is entirely unusable to someone with poor vision. I SHOULD be able to use it at all. All software SHOULD just use the customer's colour scheme. With a forced white background, I cannot use it at all. What possible reasoning is there to ignoring a customer's colour scheme?

And it's not JUST ObjectDock. It's ALL of Stardock's newer software. I used to be able to use Skinstudio to customize my UI, but when they started hard-coding white backgrounds into it about 1-2 years ago, that was taken away. I have pleaded with Stardock to provide a way to turn off these hard-coded colours and use the system colours, but they ignore me.

You may not be in ObjectDock's configuration for long, but you ARE in Skinstudio for hours. As is, they have lost an ODNT customer of 10 years. I have relied upon them for customizing Windows, but they have let me down.

I'm hoping there is a way to save your docks/tabs into a place where you can just restore it or at least copy it back to a folder and have everything restored. While you can package a dock, you have to go put all the images into it (I believe that's right). Would just like some simple manner to restore all my docks/tabs/images since when I do have to it's such a pain.

You can already do it, below where You would make a package it should say Backup! .............oh, and the new UI looks cool ID!

I see.  You might have posted that information instead of just saying it's completely unusable.  We might have understood the why.  It's never a good idea to just point out a problem, without explaining why it's a problem.  You did say "under a high contrast colour scheme" but we can't deduce that you have poor vision from that.  In regards to your point about using the customers color scheme...email Stardock (have you?) and see what they say.  If you haven't tried/asked, you really shouldn't just give up on them imo.

I second that, m1. Wasn't trying to be contentious, kwyjibo. Didn't know you had an eyesight issue. Try emailing stardock, like the Munkeh said.

I have done that many times. When I saw this screenshot, that they are now changing ObjectDock from its usable interface to hard-coded colours means they really do not care about Accessibility.

My posts here in this article are me at my wit's end, frustrated and trying to bring attention to the problem here in the open, after all emails have failed. Hopefully others will read this and speak up with me. Hopefully... even people that don't have vision problems will speak out or email them.

Please, Stardock, put in the option to disable all hard-coded colours and use standard window controls into all of your software.

Ah, but have you seen the new User Interface in Winstep Nexus (click for a video of it in action where the new UI is clearly visible)? Winstep Xtreme is getting that same interface at the end of the month (and multi-language support too). So there!

 

Don't know what more to tell you.  I'm not a programmer so I don't know why they'd do that.

@jcrabbit, YES!, I downloaded it the other day for just that reason and it is MILES better than the current full Nexus interface.  I very much look forward to seeing the whole suite make that much needed change.  Kudos.

Now...about the performance of the Nexus dock once it's got a half dozen or more items on it...    

Pft! Stop running it on a 486 DX2 then.

No comment from Stardock on the hard-coded colours?

Consider it acknowleged.

Actually, JCrabbit, this in on a quad core 6600 with nvidia 295 graphics under Vista 64 with 8 gb of RAM...so I definitely shouldn't be seeing chunkiness and slowdowns when I'm just adding more shortcuts to a single dock, hahahaha.

No, indeed you shouldn't, Excalpius.

One of my XP testing systems is a very old PIII at 500 Mhz with 384 MB of RAM, and although Nexus doesn't beat any speed records on it, it is still perfectly usable. In fact, my Win9x testing system is an even more ancient (ok, decrepit) PII at 300 Mhz with 128 MB of RAM (of course, since layered windows are not supported under Win9x, there is no magnify animation, which kind of helps ).

So, the question is: how many dock items are we talking about here? What's the icon size? What special effects (icon reflections, dock background glass blur, animations, etc...) are enabled? What dock background are you using? Does it have overlays? Does it restrict icon reflections to the background like the Winstep K-TEK4D dock themes do?

If you turn on all the effects at once, even a Quad Core will eventually start struggling - but that would happen to any dock that features as many special effects and features as Nexus does.

Ah, I didn't realize you are the developer, yes?  Okay, useful notes.

 

I had installed the full WinStep and as I mentioned the preferences interface was a nightmare to navigate.  Eventually I figured it out but found the dock was "steppy" in its animation once I got it 1/2 configured.  Never finished configuring it because of that. 

But I saw this new standalone dock release, so I installed that on top of WinStep and it seems to work fine.  The new GUI is great, btw.

So, I've got about 10 items on the dock.  Six are "gadgets" for CPU, Net In (Net Out btw always returns the same values as Net In so methinks that is broken somewhere hehe), clock, start menu, recycle bin, and weather.

The other five are standard folder or application shortcuts.  This represents 1/2 of the icons on have on the same Object Dock Plus zoomer on my main monitor, #2 of 3.  Nexus is running on my primary monitor, #1.  This allows me an apples to apples comparison. 

But even with twice as many icons (and four more docks hidden around), the OD+ zoomer is buttery smooth animation-wise, and the Nexus dock is starting to step a bit as I move the mouse through them.  It's subtle but there.  I know if I add more, it'll slow down more.

Both have semi-transparent backgrounds (Leopard default, 20% transparent in Nexus).  The only difference is that Nexus has 50% reflections, which is indeed the main reason I am testing it...and behavior under Vista 64.  

I also have "Apply transparency to dock background only (icons remain opaque)" ON/Checked because the Leopard dock is still a bit too solid for my liking by default.

NOTE:  I've done some testing to narrow this down.  It appears to be linked to the Unmagnify that occurs when the mouse moves off the dock back into the main window area.  Sliding the mouse through the dock objects doesn't step at all...it's baby smooth.  I've tried different desktop backgrounds (still, color, deskscape dream) and it makes no difference.  When the mouse moves off the dock, it shrinks back down kinda choppy...as if it is fighting something that it doesn't have to when the mouse is hovering over it.

I hope these notes help.  Thanks for being here and supporting your product.  8)

 

 

 

Yes, the Net Out meter was 'broken' in the first public beta of Nexus.  Fixed now for the next release though.

Ah! That is actually very useful information. Unlike what happens when mousing over the dock, the magnify/unmagnify animation uses a high-resolution multimedia timer, the resolution of which is hardware dependent. That's what might be causing a problem, and I have a pretty good idea on how to solve it.

Oh yes, they did help a lot thank you. Wanna beta test for Winstep?

And my apologies to Stardock for 'stealing' their thread.

I realize I'm the one who started this when I defended Winstep on my original reply to Excalpius, but it's not 'good manners' to talk about Nexus on an ObjectDock thread. I probably wouldn't like it much either if Jeff came barging into a Winstep thread and turned it into an ObjectDock discussion.

So, lets move any further posts about Nexus into another thread, ok?

Once again, my sincere apologies to Stardock and Jeff.

Yes, of course I'd like to help out any way I can, beta testing included.

 

And, agreed, I had forgotten this was an OD2+ thread myself.  Sorry, mates!  8)

 

Please private message me when you get the chance.  Peace.  

Winstep is not that good. Objectdock blows it away really. I tied it wasn't impress. What make Objectdock stand out is the tab bar. No one else has it. A standard dock for standard icon along with a tab dock for applications.

OD 2.0 looking good....

Any news on beta availability?

You have to hand it to Stardock for trying to be like Apple.

'Cause of the reflection?  Or something else?

Of course.

And why shouldn't they??  MS wants to be like Apple: Linux wants to be like Apple: IBM wants to be like Apple, and Sun Systems Solaris wants to be like Apple (according to Apple), so why should Stardock miss out on a baseless Apple accusation that'd bring 'em great publicity... more people coming to check out its version of AppjectDock.