Apple-style 'dock' for WIndows.
Friday, February 9th, 2007 - 9:56am
The bar in OS X that has icons shortcuts on it.
http://www.punksoftware.com/rocketdock
Free. I'm using it at the moment. Works well.
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The bar in OS X that has icons shortcuts on it.
http://www.punksoftware.com/rocketdock
Free. I'm using it at the moment. Works well.
Why not use Quicklaunch?
Because people, for some insane reason, think the dock is cool.
I'm not a fan of the dock, honestly, but I use a Mac as my primary computing platform.
Mystic Violet wrote:
Icon go big....icon go small....icon go big....icon go small....WAVE WAVE WAVE!!!!!
I mean whats not to like
Warrior Asherr
Hunter Ghorin
The Dock serves a particular purpose in OS X that isn't needed in Windows. In Windows closing an application's window closes the application. In OS X, you can close all windows and still have the app open. There is a need to see what apps are still open, hence the dock. Plus there is the obvious practicality of the dock, you can fit so much more on it than Windows' taskbar.
I think what rolls eyes so much is the magnification of icons, which comes off as excessive and a little decadent to some. You see it in the store and fall in love with it, then after a few months of use you realize magnification isn't all that useful unless you have over 40 icons in your dock. For power users, people with lots of tools and the need to shape and change their computing space quickly and fluidly, the Dock is damned near perfect.
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
"What misconception traveled down the road and made you want to be here?"
But you can disable magnification, as well as the Genie or Scale effects when launching an app. I'm using the latest build of Tiger and have all of that stuff, plus the Dashboard, completely disabled. Even so, I still miss it when I'm at work on my XP machine.
The interface benefit of the dock is that a single icon does both application launching and bringing that application's open windows to the front of your desktop and it's always in the same spot. YOu can also easily tell if an application is open and you can easily select that app to run at login if you want.
You can quickly drag files into different applications which is especially useful if you program or do any sort of designing. Most of the big points were already covered... the only draw back I can think of is on really small screens it might cramp your desktop space, of course you can just shrink it down if you wanted to on the fly by clicking the line next to the trash.
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Because it takes up the same screen-space as your open apps do, so more quicklaunch icons, the smaller your buttons for your open apps. I have 8 or 10 icons I want to put in quicklaunch, but I also frequently have 30+ windows open that I need to switch between, alt-tab is not practical and neither is a long quicklaunch bar or a quicklaunch bar that is shrunk and you have to scroll through to get to your icons, because then it's not quick any more.
I was actually just thinking earlier tonight I would like an app launchbar that would auto-appear when I held a key or moved my mouse to a certain screen location. Thanks for posting 1dgaf.
I've tried a couple of these and they just don't do it for me. The combination of TrueLaunchBar and Launchy is tough to beat. Plus it minimalizes screen real estate impact.
Live: LiquidmantisGWJ | PSN: LiquidmantisGWJ
Web: Mantis on the Mountain
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Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
I tried RocketDock and a couple of others, including the one from Stardock(I think). Mostly, it was "cool", but I didn't see the need to spend that much performance on it: loading time, cpu time, memory. It's a waste, IMO. Quicklaunch works, and if you organize your shortcuts and XP startmenu, I see no need for it.
Then again, I still FTP with the CLI.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
I have a license to objectdock. I have to say, it's really cool, and I love Stardock as a company (I mean, they made GalCiv, what's not to love). I used to use it all the time. But when I built up this new machine, for whatever reason, I really just wanted everything clean again, and I really don't miss it. I wouldn't mind if the actualy native windows XP bar did a bit more, but putting yet another layer over it? Oi.
Gamertag: GWJ Rabbit | Last.fm | Twitter
"In other news, Miyamoto pissed on my head, and gave me a forecast of rain." - *Le
I have a dock installed because I have something to the tune of 35 games installed and there isn't another good way to get them on the desktop.. other than re-enabling desktop icons which I will not do.
Like rabbit, my dock of choice is Objectdock which I too have a license for.
It's mostly just a clean desktop thing. I cringe when I sit down at a computer and it has a hundred icons scattered around the desktop like the user had muscle spasms in their arm and hand or something.
It started with Arovin introducing me (and whomever else read that thread) to Blackbox and it's grown from there to a hate for seeing much of anything on the desktop except the wallpaper and a smaller bar telling me what I have open.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
Lack of a dock doesn't mean a filthy desktop.
Live: LiquidmantisGWJ | PSN: LiquidmantisGWJ
Web: Mantis on the Mountain
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Women can't be in the same room with me without abandoning men forever - rabbit
And.. nobody said it does.
It was a simple explanation of why I feel it's the most elegant solution to getting shortcuts to oft used programs easily available without having regular desktop icons enabled.. as I pretty much hate those now.
The windows start menu is irritating as is the regular taskbar.
I've replaced all of that with two simple little programs. From a getting started standpoint it's almost not even using windows anymore.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
How often do you really look at your desktop? I just dump everything on mine, it's my main "working" folder. It is so easy to just go the top of the tree in Explorer or Save windows or just click Desktop than worry about navigating to other folders. I don't see why anyone would care what's on their desktop unless each time they want something they're minimizing all their apps and using the mouse to click icons to open stuff.
Better than clickiing "Desktop" is to remember the WindowsKey+D to minimize everything.
I also use "Pin to StartMenu" and the QuickStart quite a lot. And I make categories in my start menu like "Games" and "Media" and "Dev" to put like shortcuts together, so I don't have one of those startmenus that takes up the whole screen.
I just find it much easier than using a dock, and I don't give up any extra CPU or RAM for it.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
Neither do I since Blackbox and the Dock together use less ram than Explorer.
The only way it gets higher than Explorer is if you install a lot of plugins in Blackbox.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
So are you talking about a full shell replacement? If so, that goes "beyond" just using a dock in windows, to me. If you're comparing it to opening Windows Explorer, I don't do that to launch anything(aside from the default shell version of explorer.exe windows uses as a default to just exist).
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
Blackbox is indeed a shell replacement.
But it doesn't change the usefulness of the dock alongside the shell. It's far cleaner and easier to use the two together than it is to bother with the regular windows interface stuff.
XBLive: Thin J
PSN: Thin_J
I don't imagine master craftsmen leaping away from completed projects and shouting "Done, motherf*ckers! - 1Dgaf
My desktop is completely clean, and my taskbar does not have a Quicklanch. I use Start menu.
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