Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 is Released (Major Update)

Get it at http://circledock.wikidot.com













Get it at http://circledock.wikidot.com

• Launch your programs from a circular dock.
• Drag and drop your files, folders, and shortcuts onto a circular dock that you can resize.
• Rotate the dock with either your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys.
• Change the image shown for the icons and change the skins (compatible with icons and skins for Rocket Dock, Object Dock, etc.)
• The dock appears where your mouse is by pressing a hotkey (default is F1) or your middle mouse button.
• Tested on computers with multiple monitors, Windows XP/Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit, and requires only .Net Framework 2.0.
• A new settings panel that allows you to customize many options.
• Multi-language capable. Just translate the English.ini file to the language of your choice.
• Change the image used for the dock icons with the easiest method out there: Just set the program to "Icon Replacement Mode" in the right-click menu of the centre icon and you can change all the icon images by just dragging and dropping new PNG images onto them! Huge time saver when you are customizing your dock!
• You can now toggle the visibility of the dock by moving your mouse to any edge of your screen. By default, the left and right edges are used for toggling. No need to press a button!
• Rotate the dock with your mouse wheel or arrow keys (customizable).
• Click sensitivity adjustment for tablet users.
• By default, clicking on the centre button does not open the start menu. You can enable this in the settings panel.

Please test this version out and see if there are any major bugs.

 

Wowwwwwww.... Its looks MUCH MUCH better n beautiful now Awesome... the icon' are great

 

Ooppss... but why does the dock keep disappearing?? I mean, I have it, click on it and then click on some part of the desktop, the dock circle disappears... and then when I move the mouse to some edge and bring it back n click on the desktop the dock reappears... Am I missing something here??? *confused*

 

It's one of the new features: You can now toggle the visibility of the dock by moving your mouse to any edge of your screen. By default, the left and right edges are used for toggling. No need to press a button!

But you can turn it off. However, I forgot to enable the settings to turn it off in the Settings Panel for Alpha 7. I have uploaded a new version (Alpha 7.1) to the Circle Dock download page: http://circledock.wikidot.com

 

Ahh ok... yes I understand what' happening now Thanks.

 

Hey, downloading now. Lemme test it out and see how it works! Good job so far!

 

that looks so cool..definatley would add a lil spice to a desktop.

 

Here is a video showing some of the features of Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7:

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Hey, I love the program so far! It hasn't crashed on me yet, but I turned off the start menu button...not sure why I need a start menu in the middle of my screen? Also, I still can't drag pinned start menu items onto the circle, but I got around that...oh well. Otherwise, smooth sailing here! Great job!

 

So how stable is it for people with my specs, or just Vista 32-bit in general.

 

it looks nice, but does it work properly yet?


i'll give it a test when i get home

 

I think it's pretty stable now. It is based on the last version where we got it to work on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows XP/Vista and it has been tested on dual-monitors.

I have Vista 32-bit premium and XP SP2 on a virtual machine and it hasn't crashed on me yet. There really shouldn't be a reason it should crash unless you pass it a malformed settings file, which I will make it immune to later on.

This release works really well, except I haven't done much for the animation side of things since that is the hard part and requires more planning and research.

 

So far after running it for a full work day, not a single crash! Awesome, a much better improvement over the older version. You should be very happy with yourself.

 

Awesome job man! I had the previous Alpha version that was pretty stripped down, but this one is much improved! Love the ability to be able to flick my mouse to the side of the screen to bring up the dock. Also, there are a ton of high-res icons included which is very helpful as well.

Great work!

 

How come the original icons are extremely blurry and low-resolution when put onto the circle dock? Some of my programs don't have the substitute icons, and I would like to keep the originals.

 

If you are using Windows XP, it doesn't have high resolution icons built in to the system. Windows Vista has it for most icons but I haven't seen any code out there that allows you to access these high resolution icons so I'm using the highest resolution one that the system provides.

When these images get enlarged, they become blurry. To get more replacement icons that are high resolution, go to www.deviantart.com and search for "dock icons".

 

Yeah, but I'm expecting more than 16x16 icons. What about regular docks? Those allow the icons to go as big as the icon size (eg, 256x256), not 16x16. Also, another question. How to you move icons from spot to another on the dock? It wasn't hard to move it to the outer rings, but when I try to move an icon back it doesn't work.

EDIT: Ah, I realized that you have to drag the icon directly on top of the icon to place it next to it, not in between. Seems kind of weird, but at least it works

One more thing. Can you rename the "Dock Folder" you can create?

 

The icons extracted right now are 32x32 but I'll see if I can get it to extract 256x256 icons in Vista.

The reordering isn't quite as intuitive as I like right now because I haven't got the animation code right yet. I could make it animated so that the icons would reorder as you drag one of them around but I prefer to wait until I know I can do it smoothly.

 

Is there any way to rename the icons once they're on the dock? For instance, I've got the OpenOffice writer and calc that I want to rename to 'Writer' and 'Spreadsheet'. Is there a way to do this?

 

There is no graphical way to do that yet. I'll be adding this feature in for the Alpha 8. For now, you can always go to the Circle Dock directory -> System -> Settings -> DockItemData.ini and type in the name that you want in the Name= field for the dock icon you want.

You will either have to refresh the dock by opening and backing out of a Dock Folder or restart the program.

 

it is a great idea, i love the concept and the work you have done so far, but it is still lacking some features.

1. bubble up animation with mouse over on icons.
2. not enough behavioral options (i want to be able to have the dock behind every window, but never hidden)
3. dock should appear in last position when mouse is brought over to left or right.


my biggest issues is that it doesn't behave like rocketdock which behaves perfectly. if you can get all the same behavioral abilities as rocket dock then i would def choose circledock over it. but as for now it isn't good enough to use. rocketdock is still more comfortable.

i have having to move the dock towards the center to use it.

SUGGESTION: maybe make it so when you move the scroll wheel, the dock turns.... just a thought.

 

btw, I spent hours trying to do this and eventually I found the method on this page to work:
http://mattolenik.spaces.live.com/default.aspx?mkt=en-US&partner=Live.Spaces?71e14708

Only trouble is, when no jumbo icon was available, it gave me a smaller icon with whitespace padding around it, and I had no way to really tell that this had happened. But... play around a bit.

 

For (1) - I'm waiting until I get the animation method down right first before I embark on writing more animation code.
For (2) - I don't know what everyone wants so I don't want to code in options just for more more options. If I think it would be beneficial, I'll eventually add it in. As for having the the dock behind every window, you can go to the settings panel -> General and uncheck Keep Dock Above All Other Windows. I could also code it so that the dock is always at the bottom of the z-order but nobody has said they needed that.
For (3) - You can change this behavior in the Settings Panel under the Locations tab. Uncheck the option that is currently there and the dock won't follow your mouse around.

For rotating the dock with the scroll wheel, it already does that. Just place your mouse over part of the dock and rotate your scroll wheel to rotate the dock. You can also use your arrow keys.

 

Sweet! That code has got to get more attention because it's so hard to find. I'll add it into Circle Dock in a little bit and upload a new version!

Thanks for the help!

 

Swarmer, any chance you know how to drag and drop virtual folders (like the recycle bin) and get their CSLID's? Circle Dock can already execute CSLID's but I haven't been able to find a way to extract CSLID's from a drag and drop operation.

 

No, I haven't played with drag and drop yet... sorry.

 

Personally, what I want (which I told you after your initial release), is to turn hiding off, and have the window layering be either natural z-ordering (like normal apps) or always-on-bottom. Is this available yet? (I haven't tried out the latest yet, but I will if it has this.) The lack of this feature is a complete deal-breaker for me. I really don't see the point of hiding the dock, when you can just have windows appear over it instead. (Of course since this is open source, I should really just implement it myself instead of whining....)

And of course, a hotkey is needed to bring it to the front (just like Win-spacebar does with sidebar gadgets.)

Natural ordering is very easy to implement. The tricky part with always-on-bottom is, after you bring it to the front using the hotkey, when does it stop staying in front... and does it go back to bottom or does it just go to natural ordering? I wonder how RocketDock does this....

 

You can make Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7 behave like a normal Window in the z-order by going to the Settings Panel -> General and uncheck the always on top option. There isn't a way to bring the dock forward with a hotkey or button but it will bring itself forward when you mouseover it. In the Settings Panel under Toggling, you can see part of the settings that will be used to enable these actions but they are not enabled yet.

For the always on bottom option, that can be implemented easily with SetWindowPos(...) and you can make the dock topmost when the user toggles it and make it bottom-most again when the dock loses focus. I think I might have forgot about your request since I have been reading other boards and e-mails and chose the options which I think the majority of users would want.

 

That's cool... thanks for the tip!

I'll give it a spin in the next day or two....

But... bring-to-front on mouseover sounds like a nuisance though... because you're using Firefox etc. and then all of a sudden the dock pops up. I mean it's fine for RocketDock because it sits on the edge of the screen... but this thing is more two-dimensional so I won't want it popping in front all the time... I will be needing bring-to-front by keyboard, not mouse. However, this could be the same key as un-hide, where the key's action is just changed to unhide-if-hidden-and-bring-to-front.

 

I just played around with the Always on Bottom setting on Rocket Dock and I can see how it can be useful. However, I think the "Always on Bottom" title sounds a bit misleading because the way I'm picturing it, the dock is only "Always on Bottom" when it doesn't have focus and then the dock would bring itself to the top when it gets focus.

I think I can add this in for the next Alpha as well as the option to always be visible.

 

Exactly.

Sweet!

 

@ Bart and swarmer ... hats off
try and like it so far,

cheers ...

 

It's all Bart... I didn't do anything.

 

Will any of the near releases add the capability to switch between open programs using the dock? As it is right now, it just opens up a new instance of the program if you click say Firefox when it is already open.

 

Yes. Maybe not for the next few releases as I work on getting some of the current issues worked out. I have most of the code to create an icon for each open program and allow you to switch back and forth. In Vista, there will be live previews in the dock. However, this isn't a high priority right now so don't hold your breathe for it.

 

I actually prefer it that way, and I have RocketDock configured to behave that way (maybe it's the default, I forget).

But if there are options to have it behave other ways (such as letting you "dock" running programs there), I won't complain... as long as it's optional. The more choices, the better.

 

Alrighty, I've got some code that will extract the high resolution icons in Vista and display them on the dock! Still testing it out and requires a bit of optimization.

@swarmer, I used the code in the link you posted but I modified it so that it works with .Net 2.0 instead of requiring WPF. However, it incorrectly converts the Alpha channels and I have to manually convert them, which is a bit of a performance hit when loading many high resolution icons in Vista.

I've also found some other code that will extract the high resolution icons and I think is faster but it doesn't get the "thumbnail" folders and previews of pictures.

 

Alpha channels... like for transparency? I don't know too much about that stuff... What are you converting and how?

As for the performance... hmmm... one option would be to save it as a PNG once converted, so that it's a one-time hit.

Also... you could look into the ImageMagick library for this kind of image manipulation stuff... it's really cool in general, although I haven't tried to use it with the Vista icons at all. I don't know whether it might help with the performance issue or not. Actually I've only ever used their command line tools to resize images, but they have libraries as well, including a .NET library.

 

Circle Dock 0.9.2 Alpha 7.4 is released. Just a few changes but one of them addresses the usage of high resolution icons in Vista that I eventually got to work. I simply can't believe how many hoops you have to jump through to get at the high resolution icons. Unbelievable.:

From the new Change Log page:

• Add the ability to use the default high-resolution icons for Windows Vista users so they don't have to change all the icons. Windows XP users won't see a difference because they don't have high resolution icons.
• Thumbnails of files are now displayed in the correct aspect ratio instead of being stretched.
• Settings Panel can now be minimized like a normal window.
• Added the ability for Circle Dock to self repair and upgrade the Config.ini file which means that from now on, users can upgrade by just copying the newest CircleDock.exe file into their current Circle Dock directory.
• Includes a French language file courtesy of Thomas Favre.

Eric Wong

 

Bart is the creator, you are helping with active good inputs to mold this to a cool app

cheers ...

 

Well, ok... that's true.

 

i don't know why but it seems to lag a bit on xp for my computer.

 

I have found out through some experimentation that Circle Dock requires a somewhat recent graphics card to run smoothly. It will run on older computers with graphics cards that have little memory but I think that you need a recent graphics cards with at least 64 megs of dedicated ram to run smoothly.

Alpha 9 will bring some significant performance improvements and animation smoothing because I'm merging some WinKibaDock code into it but you will still need a somewhat recent graphics card to run smoothly.

 

How have I not heard of this? I been missing out.

I will definitely give this a try.

 

now it's getting better and better... In the first version for sure, I'm going to write a blog about this...

Please send me email at [email protected] and I will help you
in sharing the software to the world... Congratulations and keep up the Great work!

I'm sure in the future, if you reduce the performance issues... It will become popular... Not just for the Geeks but for all.

 

Circle Dock Alpha 9 will see significant performance and animation improvements because I've learned what needs to be done to improve it from the WinKibaDock project.