It’s got everything you could want from such a program, and more, including widgets that check your email, give you the weather forecast, the time, and much, much more. Winstep Nexus is a great, well-rounded dock program. You can also use “Shelf Tabs” to replace your desktop, and view your running apps, all from your dock. In the full version, which costs $24.95, you can add additional docks, allowing you to do things like categorize widgets, apps, and files into nice-looking docks on all sides of your screen. The free version of Winstep Nexus is missing quite a few features, however.

You’ll notice that they don’t even need to use Windows Explorer or the task bar at all, as everything they need is pinned safely to their dock. The developer created this four minute video that shows off something they were able to create:

With Winstep Nexus, you can really go all-out. Of course, Winstep is a dock, and so you can always pin files and apps onto it. Anyone who’s ever used an Android device will be familiar with these as widgets–little graphical or textual icons that can give you the weather, your email, system statistics, and more. Winstep Nexus’ main attraction is most likely its extensive “module” support. Partial transparency only kinda-sorta works on Windows 8.Can be awkward to use if you’re not used to it.Additional strain on CPU and RAM over using Windows Explorer to open apps/files.CPU/RAM meters handily placed in your dock, plus many more other widgets.You can have the weather, your computer’s stats, your bandwidth usage, and all of your favorite apps and files positioned right at the top–or bottom, or sides–of your screen.

Winstep Nexus is a docking program that brings not only apps and files but widgets to your desktop. Winstep Nexus is a beautiful dock that, along with allowing you to pin files and programs, also brings widgets, including the weather and a CPU widget, to your screen. There’s still no official way, after three years, to dock specific files on your taskbar–only programs, and within their jumplists, files. Handy as Windows 7’s taskbar may be for launching all of your favorite apps and programs, it’s still not perfect.

Winstep software