NextStart

A few things: Nextstart has the ability to hide the normal Windows taskbar and use its own (which is probably what you're seeing). Newer Nexstart themes have a taskbar similar to a windows one, while older themes just have tasktiles (no bar).

You can tell it whether to leave the Windows taskbar alone or use NextStarts by going into NexStart config and, I think, Go to the global options (The config screen with the globle). I think there is a checkbox there.

That big icon you're seeing is a hotspot button. NextStart can display menus via hotspots. Hotspots come in several flavors: Hotspot buttons (icons you click), Hotspot areas (define an area on the desktop that you click), or hotspot mouse bumps (bumping the mouse against screen edges and corners).

You may be able to change the icon of that button by righclicking it. That should display a dialog window in which you can change the icon.

Alternativley, in NextStart config, you can go to the hotspots config window and change it there. In there, you'll see that each hotspot has a number associated with it (1 to 32). You may have to go throuh the dropdown list, looking for the one you want.

You'll note that as you go from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on, that the other configuration values change. From that you can figure out what hotspot you're working with. It's rather awkward as there's no "hot spot name" to easilly differentiate between hotspots when you're changeing the configuration of one of them.

You can find a tutorial on hotspots and menus via the link below. Note that the tutorial was written before the latest version of NextStart so the configuration windows are a bit different (basically allot of the skinning specific configurations were part of the top level configuration tabs/buttons were reoganized into sub-categories under the appropriate configuration tab/button.

http://www.winstep.net/help/tutorial/intro.html

You are probably using NextSTART v2.81. Version 3.0 (available from the Winstep web site) is currently still in beta, but it's the version that supports the startbar/quicklaunch items you see in the latest themes... Don't worry, it's basically bug-free, so download and install at will.

Even with version 2.81 you can get rid of the Computer icon: just change the Hotspot's activation method so that instead of 'Left click on Hotspot button' it uses something else like 'Bump Top Left Screen Corner'. Might be a good idea to take a look at the 'Hotspots' section of the User Guide/Help File first, though.

Hope this helps,

Jorge Coelho
NextSTART 3.0 - A user interface you can actually use!
http://www.winstep.net - Winstep Software Technologies
IRC Chat: #winstep on AustNet